Top 80 Richard Bachman Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “They’re animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?”

— Richard Bachman

2. “July disappeared wherever used months go. Then half of August. Soon summer would be over.”

— Richard Bachman

3. “It’s easy to blame, easy to want revenge. But when you look at things closely, you start to see that every event is locked onto every other event; that sometimes things happen just because they happen. None of us like to think that’s so, because then we can never strike out at someone to ease the pain; we have to find another way, and none of the other ways are so simple, or so satisfying.”

— Richard Bachman

4. “Just go on dancing with me like this forever, Garraty, and I’ll never tire. We’ll scrape our shoes on the stars and hang upside down from the moon.”

— Richard Bachman

5. “The longer you went without speaking, the harder it gets to break the silence.”

— Richard Bachman

6. “He touched McVries’s shoulders, setting him straight again. McVries looked up at him sleepily and smiled. “No, Ray. It’s time to sit down.”

— Richard Bachman

7. “If there is an after, I hope it’s not dark. And I hope you can remember. I’d hate to wander around in the dark forever, not knowing who I was or what I was doin’ here, or not even knowing that I’d ever had anything different.”

— Richard Bachman

8. “None of us really has anything to lose. That makes it easier to give away.”

— Richard Bachman

9. “A mule doesn’t like to plow. But he likes carrots. So you hang a carrot in front of his eyes. A mule without a carrot gets exhausted. A mule with a carrot spends a long time being tired.”

— Richard Bachman

10. “Garraty thought that memories were like a line drawn in the dirt. The further back you went the scuffier and harder to see that line got. Until finally there was nothing but smooth sand and the black hole of nothingness that you came out of.”

— Richard Bachman

11. “When everything is at its worst, your mind just throws it all into the wastebasket and goes to Florida for a little while. There is a sudden electric what-the-hell glow as you stand there looking back over your shoulder at the bridge you just burnt down.”

— Richard Bachman

12. “Crowd was to be pleased. Crowd was to be worshipped and feared. Ultimately, Crowd was to be made sacrifice unto.”

— Richard Bachman

13. “Then you can blame it on your parents,′ I said, smiling. ‘Won’t that be a relief?”

— Richard Bachman

14. “Garraty watched apathetically and thought, even the horror wears thin. There’s a surfeit even of death.”

— Richard Bachman

15. “The sea at the horizon was yet unchanged. It glittered blue and ageless, full of dancing points and nets of light in the late afternoon sun.”

— Richard Bachman

16. “Vielleicht gab es nicht mal einen Regenbogen, geschweige denn einen Topf mit Gold.”

— Richard Bachman

17. “They walked on, somehow in step, although all three of them were bent forever in different shapes by the pains that pulled them.”

— Richard Bachman

18. “The apartment was haunted by the ghost of long-departed cabbage.”

— Richard Bachman

19. “If people just took it a day at a time, they’d be a lot happier.”

— Richard Bachman

20. “The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth’s wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death.”

— Richard Bachman

21. “They got that way, Garraty had noticed. Complete withdrawal from everything and everyone around them. Everything but the road. They stared at the road with a kind of horrid fascination, as if it were a tightrope thay had to walk over an endless, bottomless chasm.”

— Richard Bachman

22. “Blaze himself was pretty sure he himself was going to hell, as were most other people. It was a dirty world, and the longer you lived, the dirtier you got.”

— Richard Bachman

23. “Es gibt einen Ort in uns, wo es praktisch die ganze Zeit regnet, die Schatten immer lang und der Wald voller Ungeheuer ist.”

— Richard Bachman

24. “Another time, another place.”

— Richard Bachman

25. “He watched his feet, the only things that were keeping him from finding out if there really was a Kingdom of Heaven or not.”

— Richard Bachman

26. “Wenn die Intelligenten einen schlechten Charakter haben, so zeigt sich das, und wenn sie keinen schlechten Charakter haben, dann sind sie so leicht auszurechnen wie Quadratwurzeln.”

— Richard Bachman

27. “The reason all of this is so horrible,” McVries said, “is because it’s just trivial. You know? We’ve sold ourselves and traded our souls on trivialities.”

— Richard Bachman

28. “All the world is God,′ McVries said, and giggled hysterically. ‘We’re walking on the Lord, and back there the flies are crawling on the Lord, in fact the flies are also the Lord, so blessed be the fruit of thy womb Percy. Amen, hallelujah, chunky peanut butter. Our father, which art in tinfoil, hallow’d be thy name.”

— Richard Bachman

29. “The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth’s wing.”

— Richard Bachman

30. “We’ll all be glad to see you die. No one’s going to miss you, Gary. Maybe I’ll walk behind you and spit on your brains after they blow them all over the road. Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe we all will.” It.”

— Richard Bachman

31. “Getting old is like driving through snow that just gets deeper and deeper. When you finally get in over your hubcaps, you just spin and spin. That’s life. There are no plows to come and dig you out. Your ship isn’t going to come in, girl. There are no boats for nobody. You’re never going to win a contest. There’s no camera following you and people watching you struggle. This is it. All of it. Everything.”

— Richard Bachman

32. “Because if you don’t have someone to run out of town once in a while, how are you going to know you yourself belong there?”

— Richard Bachman

33. “He wondered how far his legs would carry him on their own – how long before his brain took over them and began punishing them, making them work past any sane limit, to keep a bullet from crashing into its own bony cradle.”

— Richard Bachman

34. “You think just knowing about death will keep you from dying?”

— Richard Bachman

35. “In poker the highest hand is a royal straight-flush in spades.”

— Richard Bachman

36. “Ain’t none of you ever been stuck in the mud and needed a push? I won’t ask you how you can be for this and still call yourselves Christians, because one of you would have some kind of answer out of what I call the Holy-Joe-Do-It-My-Way Bible. But, Jeezly-Crow! How can you read the parable of the Good Samaritan on Sunday and then say you’re for a thing like this on Monday night?”

— Richard Bachman

37. “Two years ago. To the best of my recollection, that was about the time I started to lose my mind.”

— Richard Bachman

38. “Freddy, forty is the end of being young. Well, actually thirty’s the end of being young forty is where you stop fooling yourself.”

— Richard Bachman

39. “How many you or I have outlasted doesn’t matter, I think. There comes a time when the will just runs out. Doesn’t matter what I think, see?”

— Richard Bachman

40. “There are no curses, only mirrors you hold up to the souls of men and women.”

— Richard Bachman

41. “Sie pflegten mir Angst zu machen, und sie machen mir immer noch Angst, aber jetzt langweilen Sie mich auch noch, und ich habe mich entschlossen, das nicht mehr hinzunehmen.”

— Richard Bachman

42. “You were starting to sound a little like a Stephen King novel.”

— Richard Bachman

43. “Nun, es gibt noch etwas anderes, an das ich glaube, William. Ich glaube, was ich sehe. Aus dem Grund bin ich ein relativ reicher Mann. Vor allem aber bin ich deshalb auch ein lebendiger Mann. Die meisten Menschen glauben einfach nicht, was sie sehen.”

— Richard Bachman

44. “This,” I said pleasantly, “is known as getting it on.”

— Richard Bachman

45. “His eyes were as blank and bright as doorknobs.”

— Richard Bachman

46. “Being someone’s responsibility makes them hate you.”

— Richard Bachman

47. “He swallowed, aware that his mind was broadcasting echoes of itself, helpless to stop, hypnotized by the grinding, Cyclopean eye of posterity.”

— Richard Bachman

48. “Die Definition eines Arschlochs ist ein Mensch, der nicht glaubt, was er sieht.”

— Richard Bachman

49. “You can’t always understand something just because you did it.”

— Richard Bachman

50. “You’re on, Ted,” I told him. “Your big chance, boy. Don’t blow it. Folks, this kid is going to dance his balls off before your very eyes.”

— Richard Bachman