Top 90 Dan Wells Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “To us he’s like... like scenery, in the background of our lives, but for him, he’s the main character. He has a life and a job and a whole story. He’s a real person. And to him, we’re the background scenery.”

— Dan Wells

52. “We need guilt the same way we need pain – because it reminds us what happened, and it helps us not to do it again.”

— Dan Wells

53. “Even a paranoid clock is being followed twice a day.”

— Dan Wells

54. “You make your own choices, Kira, and you can’t let anyone ever take that away from you.”

— Dan Wells

55. “I didn’t know how to explain what I meant; sociopathy wasn’t just being emotionally deaf, it was being emotionally mute, too. I felt like the characters on our muted TV, waving their hands and screaming and never saying a word out loud.”

— Dan Wells

56. “You don’t apologize for this Samm, it’s love, and love doesn’t weigh it’s options and pick the best one. Love just wants things and it doesn’t know why, and it doesn’t matter why, because love is the only explanation love needs.”

— Dan Wells

57. “Nobody told nature what to do.”

— Dan Wells

58. “People wanted the explanation to be as big and flashy as the killings themselves, but the truth was far more terrifying: true terror doesn’t come from giant monsters but from small, innocent-looking people.”

— Dan Wells

59. “Nobody watched people that much, and for that long, except me, and I had serious emotional problems.”

— Dan Wells

60. “Sometimes you have to put the present through hell to get the future you want.”

— Dan Wells

61. “Humans were more than capable of murder all on their own.”

— Dan Wells

62. “The books in the library were old, rotted, and there was no one left in the world to read them, but Kira made sure that none of them went into the fire. It seemed wrong.”

— Dan Wells

63. “Could I stop myself? Once I tore that wall down, could I rebuild it? Did.”

— Dan Wells

64. “That figures,” said Mom, stepping in from the landing and closing the door. “The only member of this family with a normal relationship is a sociopath.”

— Dan Wells

65. “Kira liked it, in a way. Nobody told nature what to do.”

— Dan Wells

66. “Here was something that I did all the time, and thought nothing of it, and it turns out the rest of the world thinks it’s completely reprehensible. That’s when I knew I needed to change, so I started making rules. The first one was; Don’t mess with animals.”

— Dan Wells

67. “People feared what was different, and whoever was the most different would win the witch-hunt lottery.”

— Dan Wells

68. “They buried him in dirt that smelled like broken batteries, and crouched in a fiberglass shed while the acid rain poured down to dissolve his flesh and bleach his bones.”

— Dan Wells

69. “It’s not that,” said Samm, “it’s just... I used to think the world was worse for what we’ve done, both our species, but out here I don’t think the world even cares who we are. Or were. We came and went, and life goes on, and the land that was always here before us will still be here after we’re dead and gone. Birds will still fly. Rain will still fall. The world didn’t end, it just... reset.”

— Dan Wells

70. “I wanted to do it again tonight. When I had Agent Harris unconscious in the bathroom – I wanted to hurt him and crush him and cut him until you couldn’t even tell who he was anymore, but I didn’t. Because I don’t let a broken brain tell me what to do. Because who you’re supposed to be has nothing to do with who you actually are.”

— Dan Wells

71. “I chose to follow you,” he said, and his voice was deep and rich. “And I’ll find you again.”

— Dan Wells

72. “If you could do me a favor and not tell anyone I, uh, threw myself at you, that would be very kind as well.”

— Dan Wells

73. “I never thought I had a heart until it was broken. It’s hard to see the point of something that only ever causes pain.”

— Dan Wells

74. “We think we’re invincible, and then one little crack, and boom, out comes more blood and guts and screams than you’d ever thought could be inside a single body. And when that blood goes, everything else goes with it – breath, thought, movement. Existence. One minute you’re alive and then suddenly you’re not.”

— Dan Wells

75. “I’ve been clinically diagnosed with sociopathy,” I said. “Do you know what that means?” “It means you’re a freak,” he said. “It means that you’re about as important to me as a cardboard box,” I said. “You’re just a thing – a piece of garbage that no one’s thrown away yet. Is that what you want me to say?”

— Dan Wells

76. “What did I do that I didn’t have to do? That was always the question. Figure out what we choose when we’re free to choose anytime and you’ll know who we really are. I saved Brooke, when I could have run. I chose to be hurt, when I could have chosen to never to hurt again. I was a killer. Cold-blooded and ruthless but I was a hero too. Or at least I was trying to be.”

— Dan Wells

77. “Somehow it felt appropriate that the only person who thought I was sweet was a woman who lived with a demon.”

— Dan Wells

78. “Life isn’t a thing, it’s a condition; we switch it on and we switch it off.”

— Dan Wells

79. “This was it. This was what I had never felt before – an emotional connection to another human being. I’d tried kindness, I’d tried love, I’d tried friendship. I’d tried talking and sharing and watching, and nothing had ever worked until now. Until fear. I felt her fear in every inch of my body like an electric hum, and I was alive for the first time. I needed more right then or the craving would eat me alive.”

— Dan Wells

80. “That chick makes the monsters under my bed have nightmares.”

— Dan Wells

81. “More and more,” said Heron, reaching a distance about ten feet away from him, and slowly circling to the side. “Kira, sweetie, I’m going to murder your dad.”

— Dan Wells

82. “Last of all, this book owes perhaps its biggest debt to the ultimate models for Kira and Heron and every other awesome girl in the Partials series: my two daughters. May you always have heroines to inspire you, role models to look up to, and the freedom and courage to make your own choices, no matter how simple or scary or hard or eternal they may be.”

— Dan Wells

83. “I can’t tell my dreams from my nightmares.”

— Dan Wells

84. “No matter why you’re here, no matter why any of us are here, you’re never tied down to fate. You’re never locked in.”

— Dan Wells

85. “The thing about boxes,” I said, “is that you can open them up. Even though they’re completely boring on the outside, there might be something interesting inside. So while you’re saying all of these stupid, boring things, I’m imagining what it would be like to cut you open and see what you’ve got in there.”

— Dan Wells

86. “People are always afraid of other things, they are never afraid of themselves.”

— Dan Wells

87. “She would worry about Samm and Marcus when she wasn’t running for her life.”

— Dan Wells

88. “You’ll never see us coming.”

— Dan Wells

89. “What did I do that I didn’t have to do? That was always the question. Figure out what we choose when we’re free to choose anytime and you’ll know who we really are.”

— Dan Wells

90. “I’d like to think humans have a stronger sense of justice than the random forces of nature do.”

— Dan Wells

91. “Emotional connections made you do stupid things, I guess. Margaret.”

— Dan Wells

92. “Violence is passionate and real – the final moments as you struggle for your life, firing a gun or wrestling a mugger or screaming for help, your heart pumps loudly and your body tingles with energy; you are alert and awake and, for that brief moment, more alive and human than you’ve ever been before.”

— Dan Wells

93. “Antisocial personality disorder,” she said, her voice rising. “I looked it up. It’s a psychosis.” She turned away. “My son’s a psychotic.” “APD is primarily defined as a lack of empathy,” I said. I’d looked it up, too, a few months ago. Empathy is what allows people to interpret emotion, the same way ears interpret sound; without it you become emotionally deaf. “It means I don’t connect emotionally with other people. I wondered if he was going to pick that one.”

— Dan Wells

94. “That was how the Son of Sam had ended his letter: “Let me haunt you with these words: I’ll be back! I’ll be back!”

— Dan Wells

95. “I was talking too much, and I knew I was talking too much, but I couldn’t stop. It was like my brain had been cut open, and every thought inside was spilling out on the floor.”

— Dan Wells

96. “Not murderers,” I said, “serial killers.” “That’s the difference between you and the rest of the world, John. We don’t see a difference.”

— Dan Wells

97. “I wondered, then, if I was doing all of this because I wanted to save the good guys, or if I just wanted to kill the bad guy. And I wondered if that made a difference.”

— Dan Wells