Top 400 Grady Hendrix Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

353. “A true witch does not fear change. She is in an eternal state of revolution.”

— Grady Hendrix

354. “It’s starting to feel like an episode of Scooby-Doo.”

— Grady Hendrix

355. “There was no falling-out, no great tragedy, just a hundred thousand trivial moments they didn’t share, each one an inch of distance between them, and eventually those inches added up to miles.”

— Grady Hendrix

356. “What good is free love if nobody showers?” Maryellen asked.”

— Grady Hendrix

357. “Friend “ is a word whose sharp corners have been worn smooth by overuse. “I’m friends with the guys in IT,” she might say, or “I’m being some friends after work.” But she remembers when the word “friend” could draw blood.”

— Grady Hendrix

358. “You had a bag of money because that was how you had been paid, and people who got paid in cash were either hit men, drug dealers, bank robbers – or waiters, she supposed. But James Harris didn’t seem like a waiter.”

— Grady Hendrix

359. “In Charleston, the day you become an adult is the day you learn to ignore your neighbor’s drunk driving and focus instead on whether he submitted a paint-color change proposal to the Board of Architectural Review. The day you become an adult is the day you learn that in Charleston, the worse something is, the less attention it receives.”

— Grady Hendrix

360. “He was just a little boy in love with himself, making deals without ever asking the price, thinking he’d never have to pay. She saw him, not evil, not good, just another boy who thought he was the only person in the world who mattered.”

— Grady Hendrix

361. “Nothing in magic is gained by aiming straight for it. As in life, it is the failures that prove to be most valuable because it is in failure that you learn anything useful, about the world or about yourself.”

— Grady Hendrix

362. “Mothering, manipulating – sometimes there wasn’t a difference. She’d learned that from her mom.”

— Grady Hendrix

363. “You’ve been three thousand miles away,” Mark said. “While I’ve been here dealing with Mom and Dad being dead, so you don’t get to suddenly parachute out of your nerd plane and start barking orders.”

— Grady Hendrix

364. “Louise knew her dad. His cheapness was legendary. He called it “understanding the value of a dollar.”

— Grady Hendrix

365. “It was cruel to make her think that someone had come for her. It was sadistic to make her think she was not alone when she knew that she was always alone.”

— Grady Hendrix

366. “Before she could react, Louise found herself and Poppy enveloped in a hug that felt like an airbag going off in her face.”

— Grady Hendrix

367. “You ladies read a strange assortment of books,” James Harris said. “We’re a strange assortment of broads,” Kitty replied.”

— Grady Hendrix

368. “Trinity was one of those happy, super-popular, high-energy girls who reminded Amy of the creatures from Gremlins: she was fun for about half an hour, then you wanted to stuff her in a blender.”

— Grady Hendrix

369. “Chrissy said there were only two forces in the world and they balance each other: life and death. Creation and destruction.”

— Grady Hendrix

370. “You can’t judge a book by its cover but the cover does give you a pretty good indication of what’s inside.”

— Grady Hendrix

371. “I’m not sure if puppets and dolls are the same, theologically speaking, but eBay is rife with them.”

— Grady Hendrix

372. “Our parents say the War is good. The president says the bomb is good. They tell us factories that poison the earth are good. They say drugs are bad, and burning draft cards is bad, and hippies are bad, and everyone who wants to stop the War and save the planet is bad. It’s brainwashing! Everything they say is bad is good, and everything they say is good is bad. So maybe we should stop marching along like a bunch of sheep and start thinking for ourselves.”

— Grady Hendrix

373. “They filled up their time between childhood and old age trying to be as unremarkable as possible.”

— Grady Hendrix

374. “We get subjected to sequels. That’s what makes our guys different, that’s what makes them monsters – they keep coming back.”

— Grady Hendrix

375. “She turned to the back section about the trials, and read about Charles Manson getting sentenced to death over and over again as if it were a bedtime story. She needed to reassure herself that not all men got away with it, not every time. She read about Charles Manson’s sentencing until her eyes got grainy and she fell asleep.”

— Grady Hendrix

376. “At the end of the day, some rich white people lost their money. Some poor black people lost their homes. That’s just how it goes.”

— Grady Hendrix

377. “I’m not sure how we could have been expected to know that a significant portion of them had parents deployed overseas. I also feel like maybe the first little girl who started crying might have been looking for attention?”

— Grady Hendrix

378. “You have so much, but he has so little.”

— Grady Hendrix

379. “Do not be afraid of what you feel. Never forget what you have been through. Allow your passions to build inside you rather than diminish over time.”

— Grady Hendrix

380. “I’ll come right out and say it,” Mercy told them. “Strange noises, bad vibes, your mom and dad recently passed – Your house is haunted and I’m not selling it until you deal with that.”

— Grady Hendrix

381. “We’re not a lynch mob, we’re a book club,” Kitty said.”

— Grady Hendrix

382. “And Marilyn and Heather and Dr. Carol probably hate me because they think I’ve committed the one sin we can’t forgive: lying down with your monster. They all think I’m another Chrissy Mercer.”

— Grady Hendrix

383. “Work burns the sickness from a man’s mind,” Warden Worth proclaimed. “It is the philosopher’s stone that transmutes the base metal of deviancy into the pure gold of obedience.”

— Grady Hendrix

384. “Because that’s exactly what he is,” Mercy said, coming out of the kitchen with a wine bottle and a bunch of iced tea glasses. “He’s thirty-seven years old and still works in a bar.”

— Grady Hendrix

385. “It didn’t matter what she did. Nothing mattered anymore. The world was broken.”

— Grady Hendrix

386. “Louise tried to think of how to explain death to a puppet.”

— Grady Hendrix

387. “You’ll look like this one day,” she said. “They hate us enough. Don’t hate yourselves, too.”

— Grady Hendrix

388. “First came Jaws by Peter Benchley, a novel about a stressed-out great white shark suffering from portion control issues. It sank its teeth into the New York Times Best-Seller List and hung on for an astonishing forty-five weeks.”

— Grady Hendrix

389. “Why are we more comfortable with fast, dramatic deaths than the slow decay most people get? After all, isn’t this why we fought so hard? To have the right to do what Michelle is doing right this minute?”

— Grady Hendrix

390. “The kind of people who dressed up as Ricky Walker and marched around outside my house, who followed my foster mom to malls and tried to steal her used Kleenex for voodoo rituals. These are not logical thinkers.”

— Grady Hendrix

391. “It hurts me to talk about Billy like he’s a normal artist, exhibiting in galleries and negotiating with buyers.”

— Grady Hendrix

392. “In college, she didn’t take mushrooms or microdose acid and only kind of enjoyed the occasional glass of wine, and when she saw a person having a mental health crisis in the street, she gave them a lot of distance and the next time she needed to go down that street she tried to find another way.”

— Grady Hendrix

393. “This is also a book about vampires. They’re that iconic American archetype of the rambling man, wearing denim, wandering from town to town with no past and no ties. Think Jack Kerouac, think Shane, think Woody Guthrie. Think Ted Bundy.”

— Grady Hendrix

394. “She remembered her mom saying that when you got a gift that’s all you got, but when you gave a gift you gave two, one to the other person and one to yourself.”

— Grady Hendrix

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

— Grady Hendrix

396. “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

397. “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

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

— Grady Hendrix

399. “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

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

— Grady Hendrix