Top 400 Grady Hendrix Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Now there’s always a chance that if you find acid hidden underneath a mattress in a Holiday Inn, left there by two guys you’ve never met, who were hiding it from the police and who are now in jail, it might be spiked with strychnine or something worse. But there was also a chance that it might not be spiked with strychnine or something worse, and Abby preferred to look on the bright side.”

— Grady Hendrix

352. “Maybe this is what makes a life? Responsibilities, obligations, who we tie ourselves to?”

— Grady Hendrix

353. “The last time we did this we learned one thing,” Patricia said. “The men stick together. Their friendship with him is stronger now than it was then. There’s only us.”

— Grady Hendrix

354. “And some man who’s never felt his baby crown is stronger than me? -Slick.”

— Grady Hendrix

355. “Don’t worry, Grace,” Patricia said. “When we go off, we’ll be fully cocked.”

— Grady Hendrix

356. “That was the good thing about Gretchen. As much as she wanted to save the planet, she was pretty casual about it.”

— Grady Hendrix

357. “Every story begins in blood: a squalling baby yanked from the womb, bathed in mucus and half a quart of their mother’s blood.”

— Grady Hendrix

358. “How’ve you ignored it for so long?” Louise asked. “It’s what we do,” Mark said. “Our whole family functions on secrets.”

— Grady Hendrix

359. “So much for explaining death the healthy way.”

— Grady Hendrix

360. “What do you say to people after you cut off your brother’s arm? What do you say to your brother?”

— Grady Hendrix

361. “I did it to mess with you,” Louise said. “Because you always get everything and Mom never told you ‘no,’ but I can’t anymore. Being here is really bad for my mental health. So you win. It’s all yours. I’m done.”

— Grady Hendrix

362. “Nice clean cut,” Santos said, and Louise almost said thank you but managed to stop herself.”

— Grady Hendrix

363. “Y’all want to talk to Satan?”

— Grady Hendrix

364. “Amy clawed at the maple flooring but only succeeded in peeling off one of her fingernails like a wet postage stamp.”

— Grady Hendrix

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

— Grady Hendrix

366. “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

367. “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

368. “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

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

— Grady Hendrix

370. “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

371. “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

372. “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

373. “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

374. “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

375. “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

376. “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

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

— Grady Hendrix

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

— Grady Hendrix

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

— Grady Hendrix

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

— Grady Hendrix

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

— Grady Hendrix

382. “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

383. “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

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

— Grady Hendrix

385. “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

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

— Grady Hendrix

387. “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

388. “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

389. “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

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

— Grady Hendrix

391. “Patricia, would you cheat on Carter with a stranger who showed up on your doorstep, with no people, and told you he was a vegetarian? You’d want to at least check his driver’s license first, wouldn’t you?”

— Grady Hendrix

392. “You’re going to hurt the feelings of all those new library books,” Louise said, and instantly Poppy’s eyes got wide. “They’re going to be sad you didn’t want to read them first. You’re going to make them cry.”

— Grady Hendrix

393. “When I was a kid I didn’t take my mom seriously. She was a housewife who was in a book club, and she and her friends were always running errands, and driving car pool, and forcing us to follow rules that didn’t make sense. They just seemed like a bunch of lightweights. Today I realize how many things they were dealing with that I was totally unaware of. 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

394. “And by the time this story is over, they will be covered in blood. Some of it will be theirs. Some of it will belong to others. But they will drip with it. They will swim in it. They will drown in it.”

— Grady Hendrix

395. “It touched off a fire inside her, but Patricia had the clarity to see how carefully Carter had built this trap for her. Anything she did would prove him right. She could hear him saying in his smooth psychiatric tones, It’s a sign of how sick you are, that you can’t see how sick you are.”

— Grady Hendrix

396. “Patricia suspected that getting entangled with women like this was the first step on a slippery slope that ended with her wearing felt reindeer antlers at Christmas...”

— Grady Hendrix

397. “She wanted to call Grace, to tell her what she’d seen, but when Grace didn’t understand something she refused to believe it existed.”

— Grady Hendrix

398. “Another person knows what you taste like now,” Blue said.”

— Grady Hendrix

399. “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

400. “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