The Book of Accidents Quotes

“In horror’s wake, hope was a bountiful garden.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Pain is a part of who we are. You can’t destroy it, and you can’t hide from it.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Books were usually a way for her to power her own brain down and borrow someone else’s for a while.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Question marks were shaped like a hook for a reason...”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Tell me to smile, and I’ll show you my teeth.)”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“we’re a blend, all of us, a cocktail peanut mix of niceness and badness, all bound up in a bundle of inexcusable indolence and ignorance punctuated by unanticipated moments of genuine heroism”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Or maybe, just maybe, he got it into his head that he was doing something good. Something righteous. Some of the worst things are done under righteous pretense.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“A house was just a place. A home had soul. It lived many lives, had many ghosts. Maybe they were happy ghosts. Maybe they were sad. Maybe it was a home filled with laughter—or one wet with blood and tears.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“life is strange. It’s full of mistakes and regrets, and our minds are very good at bringing those out at the worst times, the times when we’re most vulnerable. Like dreams. The best we can do, I think, is to figure out how to move forward. How we correct the errors that we made to give some peace to ourselves.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“The mind is less precarious than we think it is, Nate. Often, I believe it is our fear of losing it that’s more dangerous than actually losing it, if you’ll follow my logic. The fear of a thing is quite often worse than the thing we fear,”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“I know art when I see it, but I don’t make it. Some people are makers, others are vampires—that’s me. We grow fat on your ideas and imagination. I’m just a beautiful tapeworm, darling…”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Life’s fucked up. It just is. It’s got ups and downs and I say it’s worse not appreciating the good things, because then what’s the point? It’s like the Native Americans used to say, right? Gotta use all of the buffalo. Life is a whole damn animal, and you can’t waste any part of it.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“stirring up the kind of energy they hadn’t summoned since before Oliver was born, the kind of energy that could power a mountain village for the better part of a year, the kind of energy that reminded them both that their love was vigorous and eternal, lust-slick and heart-strong, as bright as starlight, as loud as thunder, and dirtier than a gas station bathroom.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“I’ve done therapy. They don’t tell you the truth.” “But I like my therapist.” Jake scoffed. “I didn’t say you didn’t or shouldn’t like your therapist. I’m just saying, they’re liars. They don’t know they’re liars. They just are. It’s been coded into them, the lie.” “And what lie is that?” “That you’re broken, and that the way you are is on you to fix.” “I don’t get what you mean.” Jake leaned forward, passing the bottle back. “I mean this: You being fucked up? It’s normal.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Sometimes the work emerged out of intent—the desire to make a specific thing. But just as often, what she created was not of her design, but, rather, was like archaeology: It was more of an uncovering, as if the artist’s job was simply to find what the material was trying to hide. And then wrestle it to the surface, so that all could see. Or, in her case, cut the trapped spirit free.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“You ever think with the way the world is, it’s irresponsible to bring a kid into it? It’s like, this fucking president and climate change and god, what else? Antibiotics are failing and they say all the bugs are dying and the coral reefs, too. Countries are building up their nuclear arsenals instead of paring them down. I just…shit, a new kid might be a burden on this world, and this world will sure as hell end up a burden on our kid.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“There is no quality of soul more subtle than non-violence and no virtue of spirit greater than reverence for life.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“…he’d subsumed a whole new identity. Into each world he went, he became someone slightly new to appeal to the Oliver of that place: sculpting himself into a key that fit into the hole in every Oliver’s heart.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“He doesn’t belong here. He came one night during a bad storm. Been a plague ever since.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“just maybe, he got it into his head that he was doing something good. Something righteous. Some of the worst things are done under righteous pretense.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“shit, a new kid might be a burden on this world, and this world will sure as hell end up a burden on our kid.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“You ever think with the way the world is, it’s irresponsible to bring a kid into it? It’s like, this fucking president and climate change and god, what else?”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“It’s fascinating to me,” he went on, “that alcohol is the product of ruination. As many of the best things are!”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Something about Jed was easygoing, affable—like the man was a happy sponge, just soaking up all the bad vibes and learning all about you.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“But now, the words just weren’t clicking. She looped over a single paragraph again and again, certain each time that she’d really read it, and each time failing to even parse what each word said.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“Mahavira, one of the earliest teachers of Jainism, wrote something, and it made me think of you: There is no quality of soul more subtle than non-violence and no virtue of spirit greater than reverence for life.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“She’d tried to be empathetic and understand what that was like. (She’d watched her own father die, after all.) But she also needed him to, well—to get his shit together, because this was about more than just him.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“She was good at seeing through Nate’s nonsense. He didn’t know it was nonsense, and he didn’t mean any of it. But her husband had long tried to hide himself behind a pair of dark curtains, and she was the only one who could easily part them to see who was really standing there.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“(Another aspect of Maddie: a mouth fouler than a snake that had drowned itself in a jug of cheap tequila. Men were allowed to speak that way, and women often weren’t, which Maddie took as a personal challenge. Fuck them for thinking women couldn’t be improper.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents

“That was Maddie, too. Lists within lists, plans to make new lists, lists to make new plans.”
― Chuck Wendig, The Book of Accidents