Top 400 Grady Hendrix Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Why can’t that one do it?” Miss Mary asked, jabbing a gnarled finger at Patricia. “Because you’re working that one’s last nerve,” Mrs. Greene said. “And if that one doesn’t get a break she’s liable to throw you off the roof.” Miss Mary thought about it for a minute, then said, “No one’s pushing me off any roof.” “Keep acting like that and I might help her,” Mrs. Greene said.”

— Grady Hendrix

152. “It’s a child a year, for three years,” Patricia said. “I know they’re not our children, but they’re children. Are we not supposed to care about them because they’re poor and black? That’s how we acted before and now he wants Blue. When will he stop? Maybe he’ll want Tiger next, or Merit, or one of Maryellen’s?”

— Grady Hendrix

153. “Carter stood by the door, not moving, arms folded, surveying the scene he had created, not going to comfort their son, not unstrapping her arms so she could do it instead, and Patricia thought, I will never forgive you for this. Never. Never. Never.”

— Grady Hendrix

154. “We love them to death, but we don’t like them.”

— Grady Hendrix

155. “Good girl. Smart girl. Final girl.”

— Grady Hendrix

156. “I am not sure what the appropriate gesture is to make toward the family of the woman who bit off your ear, but if you felt absolutely compelled, I certainly wouldn’t take food.”

— Grady Hendrix

157. “I bet the only time people ever talk to him is when they ask if he’s saving that seat next to him at the movies.”

— Grady Hendrix

158. “The problem was the liars. They said she could do anything she set her mind to, they told her she should shoot for the moon because if she missed she’d be among the stars, they made movies tricking her into thinking she could achieve heroic things.”

— Grady Hendrix

159. “A psycho and his brother tried to kill me,” I say. “Same thing happened to all of us, essentially. What’s to disagree on?”

— Grady Hendrix

160. “So,” Glee said. “If you want to communicate with Satan, you’d be better off brushing your teeth than doing ouija.”

— Grady Hendrix

161. “So many new people are moving here. It used to be you’d only see bumper stickers for the Gamecocks, or Clemson, or the Citadel. Now you’ve got people driving around with Alabama and UVA stickers. Any one of them could be a serial killer for all we know.”

— Grady Hendrix

162. “Great,” Maryellen moaned. “Another man with his opinions.”

— Grady Hendrix

163. “Then again, I moved here because you people are all so stupid,” he said. “You’ll take anyone at face value as long as he’s white and has money.”

— Grady Hendrix

164. “Hitler said caffeine was poison,” Blue said.”

— Grady Hendrix

165. “Louise held Poppy’s feverish, limp body for hours, wishing harder than she’d ever wished before that for just sixty seconds someone would hold her, but no one holds moms.”

— Grady Hendrix

166. “He left no one behind, no children, no shared memories, no history, no one told stories about him. All he left to mark his passing was pain, and that would fade over time. The people he’d killed would be mourned but the people who loved them would move on. They would fall in love again, have more children, grow old, and be mourned by their children in turn.”

— Grady Hendrix

167. “You wish that a gang of unwashed hippies would break into your house and murder your family and write death to pigs in human blood on your walls because you don’t want to pack bag lunches anymore?”

— Grady Hendrix

168. “Patricia’s soul decided that it was no fool and ascended into the afterlife, leaving her at the mercy of the women surrounding her.”

— Grady Hendrix

169. “I promise you things are not as bad as they seem. Nothing you’re feeling is permanent. But you have to get inside, get cleaned up and get normal...”

— Grady Hendrix

170. “They took the hits so we could skate by obliviously, because that’s the deal: as a parent, you endure pain so your children don’t have to.”

— Grady Hendrix

171. “Louise started to giggle. She couldn’t help it. This nice, clean restaurant, everyone acting normal, Mark acting normal, but a puppet had tried to kill her and she wasn’t normal anymore. She laughed harder.”

— Grady Hendrix

172. “I know you think I’m a joke,” he said. “No one ever took me seriously – not in the band, not at Vector Print, not at Quiznos. But I’ve been preparing for this for ten years. You need me to get you to Terry. I’m the only one who can do it. I really can do magic, Kris.”

— Grady Hendrix

173. “Abby realized she was asleep. And she was smiling.”

— Grady Hendrix

174. “The car buzzed at her, as if a door ajar was the most important problem in her life right now.”

— Grady Hendrix

175. “All my words keep coming back to hurt me. The letters. This book. Everything I ever wrote is a weapon turned against me. Everything I’ve ever thought comes back to make me bleed.”

— Grady Hendrix

176. “This year, the not-quite-a-book-club was reading the classics: Helter Skelter, In Cold Blood, Zodiac, Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me, and a new edition of Fatal Vision with yet another epilogue updating the reader on the feud between the author and his subject.”

— Grady Hendrix

177. “But I know what the real answer is. She’s not one of us. She’s never been a final girl. Chrissy was right. She’s a Monster.”

— Grady Hendrix

178. “We’ve been cleaning up after men our entire lives. This is no different.”

— Grady Hendrix

179. “There’s so much life and it just keeps going. Maybe not everyone’s life, but Life. It doesn’t stop for anyone... no matter how hard we try, we can’t stop life. No matter how much we fight, no matter how many we kill, things keep changing, and growing, and living, and people get lost, and fall away, and come back, and get born, and move on, and no matter what it’s all so much, it’s all so hard, the way life just keeps going and going.”

— Grady Hendrix

180. “She didn’t understand half of what she read, there were no women in it except fools and prostitutes, it had nothing to say about their lives, and it felt like a recruitment ad for the army.”

— Grady Hendrix

181. “Oh, can it,” Abby’s mom said. “Martin never liked you, either.” Abby’s dad stopped rubbing his pants for a moment and shrugged his bony shoulders. “Now that’s not entirely true,” he said. “I just never thought about you long enough to develop an opinion.”

— Grady Hendrix

182. “Because after all the monsters have flown away, hope is what’s left at the bottom of the box.”

— Grady Hendrix

183. “She had wanted some time after the funeral to adjust to her parents being gone before dealing with all this money stuff, but she was a mom. Nothing happened on her schedule.”

— Grady Hendrix

184. “You’ve lied all your life and now your lies are hurting my little girl.” Aunt Honey.”

— Grady Hendrix

185. “It’s Shining-adjacent,” Mark said in the gloom. “If you could admit that maybe you don’t know everything, you wouldn’t be raising Poppy alone.”

— Grady Hendrix

186. “For years, Amy had wondered what would happen if she stopped fighting and let go. For as long as she remembered, she had been scared of how far she would fall if she stopped struggling.”

— Grady Hendrix

187. “Everyone realizes that at some point, right? It’s part of growing up. You realize you’re not going to be the star of the show. You realize you’re going to be lucky to scrape by and pay the rent.”

— Grady Hendrix

188. “That’s how you know you are real – one day you die.”

— Grady Hendrix

189. “The world was a trap and there was no way out. Melanie started to cry.”

— Grady Hendrix

190. “You’ve become such a grouch,” she said. “Having your arm sawed off will do that.”

— Grady Hendrix

191. “We want the people we know to be who we think they are, and to stay how we know them.”

— Grady Hendrix

192. “Stealing the mail is a federal crime.”

— Grady Hendrix

193. “Mom,” she said. “What if I miss?” “Then you tried your best,” Patricia told her. “What if I break one of her windows?” Korey asked. “Then I’ll buy you a frozen yogurt on the way home,” Patricia said.”

— Grady Hendrix

194. “Are you going to do it?” she asked. “Hell, yeah,” Abby said. “Are you scared?” she asked. “Hell, yeah,” Abby said. “So why?” “Because I want to know if Dark Side of the Moon is actually profound.”

— Grady Hendrix

195. “I’ll come right out and say it,” Mercy told them. “Strange noises, bad vibes, your mom and dad recently passed – Your house.”

— Grady Hendrix

196. “Were they really discussing the differences between fried chicken cooked by two women who’d died decades ago? She felt like she wasn’t.”

— Grady Hendrix

197. “I know you don’t like me because I’m not successful enough for you,” Mark said. “But I’m actually happy with my life. People like me. They think I’m a nice guy.”

— Grady Hendrix

198. “There were so many dolls in there, waiting for her. Somewhere, in a less rational part of her brain, Louise felt that nothing could look so human and exist for so long without starting to develop thoughts on its own. What did the dolls think about?”

— Grady Hendrix

199. “She had brown eyes, and I found them and held them with mine, and she instinctively looked away; then she looked back, then she stopped moving and looked at me with a very faint smile on her lips. We looked at each other until it was obvious what was going on, and then we looked a little longer.”

— Grady Hendrix

200. “But if there was one thing she was learning it was that she could endure anything, even the unendurable.”

— Grady Hendrix