Top 90 Josh Malerman Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 2

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

56. “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

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “Even someone who appears kindhearted might glance out a window. Even someone abrasive might never. The old constructs of good and bad have long been replaced with safe and unsafe. Are you a safe person? She thinks she is. She knows she is.”

— Josh Malerman

61. “Looking into her dull, brown eyes, David wondered if that was to be her lot in life – absorbing the emotions and passions of others, like human tofu.”

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

63. “Drunk or not, I saw the face of Guilt out there! And I saw the rage it takes to atone for it!”

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

65. “Later, the man’s wife wouldn’t believe him. She’s tell him he was drunk and leave him stewing in the kitchen. But ultimately he would know that it was true: that when he looked up at the man on the mare the man looked down at him and the man looked like he had no face, like the only features he had were Guilt and Rage and both were wrapped like gauze tied tight to his fiery skull.”

— Josh Malerman

66. “How can there be nothing?” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing doesn’t make noise! Nothing doesn’t wake you up! You know what does that?” he looked down the length of his booby-trapped rooms. “Something!”

— Josh Malerman

67. “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

68. “We’ve lost mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers,” Rodney Barrett is saying. “We’ve lost wives and husbands, lovers and friends. But nothing stings as much as the children you’ve taken from us. How dare you ask a child to look at you?”

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

71. “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

72. “The children have never seen the world outside their home. Not even through the windows. And Malorie hasn’t looked in more than four years. Four years.”

— Josh Malerman

73. “Maybe it’s because people can’t see the end that they agree to begin.”

— Josh Malerman

74. “Knowing that sometimes the pride one takes in one’s work is better for the job than any pace or progress can ever be.”

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

77. “Maybe a thing has to be smart enough to lose its mind.”

— Josh Malerman

78. “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

79. “But if you tell someone no enough times, they start thinking yes, just to hear something else, just to hear a different word, they start thinking yes.”

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

82. “You are saving their lives for a life not living.”

— Josh Malerman

83. “The monster, Carol thought, looks different when nobody’s watching.”

— Josh Malerman

84. “I’m the only one here with the nerve to look outside. Your worries only keep you safe long enough to worry some more.”

— Josh Malerman

85. “Forcing this philosophy deeper into his mind, searching for the soil of its roots, he allows himself to breathe, slowly.”

— Josh Malerman

86. “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

87. “It’s the spaces between words, the downbeats in a conversation in which two people feel bad for having fought.”

— Josh Malerman

88. “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

89. “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

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. “Robin was a great kid. Smarter than her father at eight years old. She liked the oddest things. Like the instructions for a toy more than the toy itself. The credits of a movie instead of the movie. The way something was written. An expression on my face. Once she told me I looked like the sun to her, because of my hair. I asked her if I shined like the sun, and she told me, ‘No, Daddy, you shine more like the moon, when it’s dark outside.”

— Josh Malerman

94. “They told me that freedom is doing something you would never ordinarily do. Freedom is leaving the person you’re used to being behind. Real freedom is doing something so dreadful that you have no choice but to turn your back on yourself. Do you understand?”

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

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

— Josh Malerman

98. “She was smiling. It was a smile Steve knew very well. The kind of smile from a girl that implied, if you answered in the affirmative, she’d see you in a way you always wish you saw yourself.”

— Josh Malerman