Top 150 Chuck Wendig Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Some people are just trash, and they find other trash and start to form a landfill. The internet makes it easier.”

— Chuck Wendig

2. “The best gift you can give somebody is a surprise because they never forget.”

— Chuck Wendig

3. “Ah. I like my coffee like I like my men. Hot, black, and coming down my throat.”

— Chuck Wendig

4. “Everything means something, but not every something matters.”

— Chuck Wendig

5. “With the blood of a scoundrel and a princess in his veins, his defiance will shake the stars.”

— Chuck Wendig

6. “The dark side is honest. The dark side is direct. It is the knife in the front rather than one stuck in your back. The dark side is self-interested, yes, but it is about extending that interest outward. To yourself, but then beyond yourself.”

— Chuck Wendig

7. “Dengar guffaws. “You little scrap-muncher. I was putting away bounties while you were still in your space diapers.” “What’s it say about you that you’re still in your space diapers?”

— Chuck Wendig

8. “Leadership can mean defiance.”

— Chuck Wendig

9. “I love you in the future tense: I will love you, tomorrow and the day after and the day after that until there are no more days left for us.”

— Chuck Wendig

10. “The Empire pretends it’s about law and order, but at the end of the day, it’s about dressing up oppression in the costume of justice.”

— Chuck Wendig

11. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, either. I suspect that the moment I have it figured out, I’ll probably die half a second later.”

— Chuck Wendig

12. “My name’s Mapo,” the boy says. “Mesa Jar Jar.”

— Chuck Wendig

13. “He’s built like a brick shithouse made of a hundred smaller brick shithouses.”

— Chuck Wendig

14. “Be patient. Be strong. Fight back where you can. The Imperial war machine falls apart one gear, one gun, one stormtrooper at a time. The New Republic is coming. And we want your help to finish the fight.”

— Chuck Wendig

15. “All hail the light, the dark, and the grey.”

— Chuck Wendig

16. “People like the illusion of choice. Gives them comfort in these strange times.”

— Chuck Wendig

17. “In the darkness, a red lightsaber rises from its hilt.”

— Chuck Wendig

18. “This is Tracene Kane, HoloNet news reporter embedded with the New Republic Thirty-First. And I’d like to tell you about a friend of mine. A friend the Empire just stole from me.”

— Chuck Wendig

19. “And no hope is greater than that of the Wookiees of Kashyyyk. Heroes of the Rebellion Han Solo and Chewbacca have gathered a team of smugglers and scoundrels to free Kashyyyk from its Imperial slavers once and for all.”

— Chuck Wendig

20. “The second Death Star is destroyed. The Emperor and his powerful enforcer, Darth Vader, are rumored to be dead. The Galactic Empire is in chaos.”

— Chuck Wendig

21. “Coruscant is in chaos, and Mas Amedda is trapped. He.”

— Chuck Wendig

22. “Life is equal parts strange and beautiful and horrible, and we’re tossed into it without a map or an instruction guide. Poems and stories have a way of helping us make sense of things.”

— Chuck Wendig

23. “War is not a state of being. It is meant to be a temporary chaos between periods of peace. Some want it to be a course of things: a default fact of existence. But I will not let that be so.”

— Chuck Wendig

24. “This isn’t some kind of inspirational story. Some scrappy, ragtag underdog tale, some pugilistic match where we’re the goodhearted gladiator who brings down the oppressive regime that put him in the arena. They get to have that narrative. We are the ones who enslaved whole worlds full of alien inhabitants. We are the ones who built something called a Death Star under the leadership of a decrepit old goblin who believed in the ‘dark side’ of some ancient, insane religion.”

— Chuck Wendig

25. “Stop abandoning your children. You wouldn’t call yourself a runner if you quit every race halfway through. Finishing is a good start. Stop looking for the escape hatch; pretend your work in progress just doesn’t have one. 23.”

— Chuck Wendig

26. “Moon in the sky, stars out, the wide-open expanse of nothing: it made him feel free and alive as the daytime never did.”

— Chuck Wendig

27. “Dialogue is a little bit jazz, a little bit hand-to-hand combat.”

— Chuck Wendig

28. “She treats herself as if she is a divine worm born of sand and stone.”

— Chuck Wendig

29. “The Empire is a thug, a bully. It’s no better than Surat Nuat, or Black Sun, or the syndicate of Hutts. The Empire pretends it’s about law and order, but at the end of the day, it’s about dressing up oppression in the costume of justice.”

— Chuck Wendig

30. “Today is a day of celebration. We have triumphed over villainy and oppression and have given our Alliance – and the galaxy beyond it – a chance to breathe and cheer for the progress in reclaiming our freedom from an Empire that robbed us of it. We have reports from Commander Skywalker that Emperor Palpatine is dead, and his enforcer, Darth Vader, with him. But.”

— Chuck Wendig

31. “Humility is well and good but facts persevere beyond the shadow of one’s own feelings,” Ackbar says. “You saved Captain Antilles. You helped us capture two high-value Imperial targets – General Jylia Shale, and Palpatine’s adviser Yupe Tashu – and confirm the deaths of two others: Moff Valco Pandion and slaver Arsin Crassus.” The way Ackbar says that word slaver – it drips with rage and condescension.”

— Chuck Wendig

32. “Plot is like Soylent Green: it’s made of people.”

— Chuck Wendig

33. “Naughty business, this Empire.”

— Chuck Wendig

34. “You’re brave and smart and kind and I’d be a fool not to trust you.”

— Chuck Wendig

35. “That’s why we gotta do good things now. Make good decisions. Try to move the rudder long before the boat ever gets near the iceberg, right?”

— Chuck Wendig

36. “I smuggle, not snuggle.”

— Chuck Wendig

37. “Note in the official record that we will be referred to in history as the Imperial Future Council, or the IFC.”

— Chuck Wendig

38. “Even a small group of people can change the galaxy.”

— Chuck Wendig

39. “Chewbacca is lovely and all, but he’s a gargantuan pillar of hair who smells not unlike a moist gundark’s undercarriage. And all that nonsensical growling? And the hugging?”

— Chuck Wendig

40. “Not it. Her. Give the Falcon some respect, kid.”

— Chuck Wendig

41. “This is a terrible plan,” he says to Han Solo – Solo, who crouches down so as not to be seen. Han Solo, the jerk. The very handsome, very charismatic jerk. “And I hate you very much.”

— Chuck Wendig

42. “For a long time he’s told his son not the truth but the idealized hope: One day the Empire will fall and things will be different for when you have children. And that may still come to pass. But now a stronger, sharper truth is required: “Jak – the battle isn’t over. The battle is just starting.”

— Chuck Wendig

43. “The woman standing there is in a crisp admiral’s uniform. She’s dark-skinned, with cold brown eyes to match.”

— Chuck Wendig

44. “That what guided me was the Force.” “You’re lying. The Force is only for the Jedi.” “No!” Jumon says, not angry so much as he is incredulous. “They wield it, but the Force is in all living things. It is what gives us our intuition, our drive, it’s what connects us to one another. We are all one with the Force.”

— Chuck Wendig

45. “Your best authorial self is always one about to ruin the story.”

— Chuck Wendig

46. “Rejection refines us. Those who fall prey to its enervating soul-sucking tentacles are doomed. Those who persist past it are survivors. Best ask yourself the question: what kind of writer are you? The kind who survives? Or the kind who gets asphyxiated by the tentacles of woe?”

— Chuck Wendig

47. “That’s a lesson we could stand to learn. Imperials are just like us. Some of them, at least. It’s easy to label those who serve the Galactic Empire as pure evil, all enemy, but truth is, a lot of those who do so were either sold a bill of lies, or forced to by threat of pain or death.”

— Chuck Wendig

48. “This is democracy,” she says. “It is strange. And it is messy. It’s not about getting it right. It’s about trying to get it right. Yes, it’s a bit chaotic. Certainly we will get some things wrong.”

— Chuck Wendig

49. “But the battle station was destroyed, Dad! The battle is over!” They just watched it only an hour before. The supposed end of the Empire. The start of something better. The confusion in the boy’s shining eyes is clear: He doesn’t understand what’s happening. But Rorak does. He’s heard tales of the Clone Wars – tales spoken by his own father. He knows how war goes. It’s not many wars, but just one, drawn out again and again, cut up into slices so it seems more manageable.”

— Chuck Wendig

50. “Princess Leia’s baby, he knows, will have a good life. The best life.”

— Chuck Wendig