Top 100 Josh Malerman Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “How can she expect her children to dream as big as the stars if they can’t lift their heads to gaze upon them?”

— Josh Malerman

52. “Your baby is smarter than you think.”

— Josh Malerman

53. “She told me that the greatest symbol of true love is self sacrifice. That our love could be legendary. Bigger than Van Gogh’s.”

— Josh Malerman

54. “But here, she knows, they are not quite as lost. Or alone.”

— Josh Malerman

55. “How can any man know how serious he is about something he says he’s going to do until he does it?”

— Josh Malerman

56. “What was dark but the absence of light?”

— Josh Malerman

57. “Wires run from under the back door into the first-floor bedrooms, where amplifiers alert Malorie and the children to any sounds coming from outside the house. The three of them live this way. They do not go outside for long periods of time.”

— Josh Malerman

58. “Something unwanted was added to something wanted and blew the whole thing apart.”

— Josh Malerman

59. “In my imagination, the Editor meditated in a mountain-cave, espoused the rules of grammar, and frowned upon speculative fiction.”

— Josh Malerman

60. “And just like when the others ask the rim questions, coincidences start to look like prophecies made true. People can find links wherever they want to. It literally happens all day every day.”

— Josh Malerman

61. “So the goal, I think, is to stay kind for as long as you can, no matter what happens to you. No matter what you go through, no matter how many breaks you get and how many you don’t.”

— Josh Malerman

62. “Guilt cannot be overcome, only endured.”

— Josh Malerman

63. “And the androgynous laughter continued, too. Thick globules of sexless cheer.”

— Josh Malerman

64. “I was waiting for a literal message, I think. Waiting for a knock at the door, someone to come tell us it was over. It’s the ultimate fantasy for those of us from the old world, isn’t it? Word that the whole nightmare has come to an end?”

— Josh Malerman

65. “That’s real cruelty. That’s world cruelty. Where it’s not just the idea that one person is cruel, it’s that they believe, and have reason to believe, the whole world feels the same.”

— Josh Malerman

66. “I don’t think it’s a matter of one man being better prepared than another,’ Gary is saying. ‘I think of it more like a 3-D movie. At first, the audience thinks the objects are really coming at them. They hold their hands up for protection. But the intelligent ones, the ones who are very aware, know they were safe all along.”

— Josh Malerman

67. “America doesn’t need you, son. America needs a psychiatrist.”

— Josh Malerman

68. “Farraline’s face was wrapped around a lantern set on a tree stump.”

— Josh Malerman

69. “Curiosity killed the cat and the snooping seventeen-year-old girl.”

— Josh Malerman

70. “So the goal, I think, is to stay kind for as long as you can, no matter what happens to you. No matter what you go through, no matter how many breaks you get and how many you don’t. And I think you always have to remember that if someone is mean to you, they are like that with everybody else too. You see, Bela? Meanness doesn’t have to spread. It can stop with the mean person, stop at the threshold of the kind person.”

— Josh Malerman

71. “You can’t consider yourself remarkable, Richard thought, without being disappointed by the people around you.”

— Josh Malerman

72. “The older I get, the more I think the barometer for intelligence is how kind you are. Because it’s not an easy thing to do, staying mindful, after all you go through in life.”

— Josh Malerman

73. “As long as nobody knew what it was, nobody could take it from her.”

— Josh Malerman

74. “Tom the man died that day. The namesake of her son.”

— Josh Malerman

75. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the house, like the heart, has corners and closets and places for things to hide. That’s really what I wanted to say to you right now. That you may not even know that something’s hiding in your house or heart unless someone like me, a friend in your life, told you that such things can be.”

— Josh Malerman

76. “Despite the behavior by some that she considered unfathomably dangerous only fourteen days ago, she also gets it. People in the new world fall into two categories: safe and unsafe. But who’s to say which lives the better, fuller life?”

— Josh Malerman

77. “Hey, you, reading this rock, YOU, standing at the Spirit of Samhattan, where do you find your identity if not in what you love?”

— Josh Malerman

78. “Boots, bushes, gardens, storefronts, buildings, streets, and stars. Why, she would have had to re-create the globe for them. But the best they got was fish. And the Boy loved them.”

— Josh Malerman

79. “If there’s one thing I could convey to you, one thing that would take root in you just like the need to eat and sleep, it would be this: try to stay kind as long as you can.”

— Josh Malerman

80. “Your worries only keep you safe long enough to worry some more.”

— Josh Malerman

81. “Malorie is able to smile, and sometimes even laugh, despite the unfathomable horrors that have become commonplace.”

— Josh Malerman

82. “If they don’t know what they do, they can’t be “villains.”

— Josh Malerman

83. “Was this grief’s only gift? The eradication of the highs, by way of leveling the lows?”

— Josh Malerman

84. “Death is never a nice thing. Even for those old enough to deserve it.”

— Josh Malerman

85. “There was a truth she was trying to deny, listening again for that pleading: no matter how much a family has grieved, if their missing loved one had not been found, alive or dead, there was always hope.”

— Josh Malerman

86. “There’s no need to live like this, miss. Consider these children. Would you rob them the chance to view a brisk, beautiful day like this?”

— Josh Malerman

87. “For the first time in either of their lives, they were falling in love.”

— Josh Malerman

88. “When one thing leaves your house or heart, it makes room for another to take its place. This is why it’s unwise to make solid statues inside. A statue takes up space without moving, without flowing, without growing.”

— Josh Malerman

89. “And Tom and Olympia both have pondered aloud, in their own ways, the worth of a life in which the only aim is to keep living.”

— Josh Malerman

90. “Creatures, Malorie thinks. What a cheap word.”

— Josh Malerman

91. “There are five thousand species of insect and animal who are hidden, watching us, listening to us right now. And we figured out how to blend in with the trees. Is that our big achievement, Private Tonka? We’re finally as smart as the bugs?”

— Josh Malerman

92. “But he didn’t care if he understood it or not. The words just felt good. Felt really good. Like every time he picked it up he slipped into a warm pool, bathwater, and the world hugged him, telling him things were crazy, yes, but we love you, kid, the world actually does love you.”

— Josh Malerman

93. “But legends had a way of making a man bigger than he really was.”

— Josh Malerman

94. “But I have closets, she says. I do. I love your daddo more than you’ll ever know, but sometimes I wonder if you’re supposed to marry someone with a similar floor plan.”

— Josh Malerman

95. “It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s one body.”

— Josh Malerman

96. “That a man built this maze and that I’m as clever as any man, big or small.”

— Josh Malerman

97. “Other feelings, outside forces, fears. These were the enemies of a good thing. These were the problems people faced.”

— Josh Malerman

98. “But neither said as much to the other. It was their way: independence wherever they could find it. And both felt like they were starring in a movie of their own, after all, or a Judith Nancy book called, perhaps, Sleuths or Getting to the Bottom of It.”

— Josh Malerman

99. “Meanness doesn’t have to spread. It can stop with the mean person, stop at the threshold of the kind person. I guess I’d put it this way: don’t let them in. Don’t invite them in.”

— Josh Malerman

100. “Malorie watches them close their eyes, then she does the same. In her private darkness, her heart beats louder. “Good.”

— Josh Malerman