149 Quotes & Sayings By Rick Yancey

We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time. Rick Yancey

But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield. Rick Yancey

You never know when the truth will come home. You can’t choose the time. The time chooses you. Rick Yancey

And, for one— ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn’t before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead. . Rick Yancey

The experience was like running into someone you hadn't seen since middle school - you recognize them, but what you really notice is the ways they've changed. They don't match your memory of how they should look and for a second you're thrown off, because your memory of them IS them. Rick Yancey

I am like the water that runs over me, immune to permanence, recycling endlessly. I am water; I am life. The form may change, but the substance stays the same. Strike me down and I will rise again. Vincit qui patitur. Rick Yancey

Who wants to read a book when you can blow something up? Rick Yancey

Without trust there's no cooperation. And without cooperation there's no progress. History stops. Rick Yancey

That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity. In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker Rick Yancey

Onto his stomach. Then knees. Then hands. His elbows quivered, his wrists threatened to buckle under his own weight. Self-centered, stubborn, sentimental, childish, vain. I am humanity. Cynical, naive, kind, cruel, soft as down, hard as tungsten steel. I am humanity He crawled. I am humanity. He fell. I am humanity. He got up. Rick Yancey

Everything's going to be okay', because that's what I wanted him to say and it's what he wanted to say and that's what you do when the curtain is falling – you give the line that the audience wants to hear. Rick Yancey

That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity. In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker. Rick Yancey

That's my name. Not Cassie for Cassandra. Or Cassie for Cassidy. And it's not Cassie for Cassiopeia. Not anymore. I am more than her now. I am all of them, Evan and Ben and Marika and Megan and Sam. I am Dumbo and Poundcake and Teacup. I am all the ones you emptied, the ones you corrupted, the ones you discarded, the thousands you thought you killed, but who live in me. But I am more than this. I am all those they remember, the ones they loved, everyone they knew, and everyone they only heard about. How many are contained in me? Count the stars. Go on, number the grains of sand. That's me. I am humanity. Rick Yancey

It's the ancient instinct: In times of great danger, be wary of strangers. Trust no one outside your circle. But there's another instinct, far older, as old as life itself, nearly impossible for the human mind to override: Protect the young at all costs. Preserve the future." - Vosch Rick Yancey

I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running, not staying, but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield Rick Yancey

He was a finisher who could not finish. He was the heart of a hunter who lacked the heart to kill. In her journal she had written I am humanity, and something in those three words split him in two. She was the may fly, here for a day, then gone. She was the last star, burning bright in a sea of limitless black. Erase the human. In a burst of blinding light, the star Cassiopeia exploded and the world went black. Evan Walker had been undone. Rick Yancey

Libraries, museums, universities, everything we designed and built over six thousand years. Cities are more than the sum of their infrastructure. They transcend brick and mortar, concrete and steel. They're the vessels into which human knowledge is poured. Rick Yancey

We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We’re pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes. Rick Yancey

Pain is necessary. Pain is life. Without pain there can be no joy. Rick Yancey

She's hurt and still imagines I'd worry about him for even a second ? I touch her shoulder. Her touch her shoulder. Her dark hair brushes the back of my hand. Her dark eyes shine. Their brightness goes all the way down." You found me, " she says. I kneel beside her. I take her hand. "I found you"." My back is broken, "she says. "I can't walk." I slide my arms beneath her. "I'll carry you". Rick Yancey

You're never perfectly safe. No human being on Earth ever is or ever was. To live is to risk your life, your heart, everything. Rick Yancey

The world existed for a very long time before this particular set of seven billion billion atoms came along and it will go right on after they're scattered up, down and sideways. Rick Yancey

The doctor was a private man, engaged in a dark and dangerous business, and could ill afford the prying eyes and gossiping tongue of the servant class. Rick Yancey

These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed. But he is dead now and has been for more than forty years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets. The one who saved me .. . and the one who cursed me. Rick Yancey

You can only call someone crazy if there's someone else who's normal. Rick Yancey

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you. Rick Yancey

Is this how humanity waves good-bye? Hell no. Rick Yancey

I brought Sammy inside and put him to bed. Said his prayer with him. “‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’” To me, just random noise. Gibberish. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I felt that, when it came to God, there was a broken promise in there somewhere. Rick Yancey

If you don't kill all of us all at once, those who remain will not be the weak. It's the strong who remain, the bent but unbroken, like the iron rods that used to give this concrete its strength. Rick Yancey

Nothing is more painful than the loneliness of being with someone who is never completely there. Rick Yancey

To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for. Rick Yancey

And it occurs to me that there’s no real difference between us, the living and the dead; it’s just a matter of tense: past-dead and future-dead Rick Yancey

We have just discovered our dear colleague butchered in a hotel room, and you wish to discuss literature? Rick Yancey

Too many people say something when they really have nothing to say. Rick Yancey

His body is pressed against my back, his arm is wrapped protectively around my waist, his breath a delicious tickle against my neck. The room is very cold; it would be nice to climb under the covers, but I don’t want to move. I don’t want him to move. I run my fingers along his bare forearm, remembering the warmth of his lips, the silkiness of his hair between my fingers. The boy who never sleeps, sleeping. Coming to rest upon the Cassiopeian shore, an island in the middle of a sea of blood. You have your promise, and I have you. I can’t trust him. I have to trust him. I can’t stay with him. I can’t leave him behind. Rick Yancey

Do you believe in God, Evan?”“Sure I do.”“ I don’t. I mean, I don’t know. I did before the Others came. Or thought I did, when I thought about it at all. And then they came and…” I have to stop for a second to collect myself. “Maybe there’s a God. Sammy thinks there is. But he also thinks there’s a Santa Claus. Still, every night I said his prayer with him, and it didn’t have anything to do with me. It was about Sammy and what he believed, and if you could have seen him take that fake soldier’s hand and follow him onto that bus…” I’m losing it, and it doesn’t matter to me much. Crying is always easier in the dark. Suddenly my cold hand is blanketed by Evan’s warmer one, and his palm is as soft and smooth as the pillowcase beneath my cheek.“ It kills me, ” I sob. “The way he trusted. Like the way we trusted before they came and blew the whole goddamned world apart. Trusted that when it got dark there would be light. Trusted that when you wanted a fucking strawberry Frappuccino you could plop your ass in the car, drive down the street, and get yourself a fucking strawberry Frappuccino! Trusted…. Rick Yancey

Beyond their immaculate design, the reason sharks rule the ocean is their complete indifference to everything except feeding, procreation, and defending their territory. The shark does not love. It feels no empathy. It trusts nothing. It lives in perfect harmony with its environment because it has no aspirations or desires. And no pity. A shark feels no sorrow, no remorse, hopes for nothing, dreams of nothing, has no illusions about itself or anything beyond itself. . Rick Yancey

You can't band together to fight without trust. And without trust, there was no hope. Rick Yancey

In the 4th Wave, you can't trust that people are still people. But you can trust that your gun is still your gun. Rick Yancey

This is what the Others have done to us. You can’t band together to fight without trust. And without trust, there was no hope. How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity. Rick Yancey

I've decided to trust him, but like somebody once said, you can't force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it. My problem is that buried box is like a scab I can't stop picking at. Rick Yancey

The shadow raised its arm high in the air and I knew - I knew before I heard my name - that he'd found me again, keeper of the promise he couldn't make, the one I had marked with my blood and who had marked me with his tears, a Silencer all right, my silencer, stumbling toward me in the impossibly pure light of a late winter's sunrise promising spring. Rick Yancey

My nose is broken, " I said. Damn that Dumbo. Made me self-conscious." My ankle's broken, " he said." Then I'll come to you. Rick Yancey

The human brain has a marvelous capacity to screen and sort experience, protecting itself against the unbearable. Rick Yancey

They made a major mistake, " he blurted out, "the dumb bastards, when they didn't start by killing you first."" Benjamin Thomas Parish, that was the sweetest and most bizarre compliment anyone's ever given me." I kissed him on the cheek. He kissed me on the mouth." You know, " I whispered, "a year ago, I would have sold my soul for that." He shook his head. "Not worth it." And, for one-ten thousandth of a second, all of it fell away, the despair and grief and anger and pain and hunger, and the old Ben Parish rose from the dead. The eyes that impaled. The smile that slayed. In another moment, he would fade, slide back into the new Ben, the one called Zombie, and I understood something I hadn't before: He was dead, the object of my schoolgirl desires, just as the schoolgirl who desired him was dead. Rick Yancey

To conquer, you must endure not just your own suffering but the suffering of others. Indifference is the ultimate evolutionary achievement, the highest rung on nature's ladder. Rick Yancey

But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that's important. Rick Yancey

In the nineteenth century, The Romantics viewed Nature as benign, a glowing reflection of God's grace. Now we know better. Nature is brutal and, if it is feminine, she's not the kind of woman you can trust. Human beings may be her finest achievement yet, but when you get right down to brass tacks, we're meat. AIDS and organisms like streptococcus don't give a crap that we subdued the earth or produced a Shakespeare.. Rick Yancey

The bent but unbroken ones. Rick Yancey

It kills me. The way he trusted. LIke the way we trusted before they came and blue the whole goddamned world apart. Trusted that when it got dark there would be light. Trusted that when you wanted a fucking strawberry Frappuccino you could plop your ass in the car, drive down the streed, and get yourself a fucking strawberry Frappuccino! Rick Yancey

With an enemy like that, who needs friends? Rick Yancey

Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield. Rick Yancey

The monstrous act by definition demands a monster. Rick Yancey

...there are more terrifying monstrosities in the world than Anthropophagi. Monstrosities who, with a smile and a comforting pat on the head, are willing to sacrifice a child upon the altar of their own overweening ambition and pride. Rick Yancey

I confessed I did not have an opinion; I was only thirteen, and this was my very first dismemberment. Rick Yancey

Nothing makes us love something more than the loss of it. Rick Yancey

Sometimes in my tent, last at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping, against the sky. Rick Yancey

The girl sleeping and the finisher, willing himself to finish her. Why didn't he finish her? Why couldn't he finish her? Rick Yancey

The answer is they didn't. They aren't here, Razor. They never were it's just us. It's always been just us. Rick Yancey

It's hopeless. And it's stupid. It's suicidal. But love is a weapon they have no answer for. They know how you think, but they can't know what you feel. Rick Yancey

As long as you draw breath anywhere -here or ten thousands miles from here- I will love you. I can't help loving you, so I choose to hate you...to make my love bearable. Rick Yancey

She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all Rick Yancey

I've always sucked at games of chance. Always hated them for that reason. Rick Yancey

There are some we cannot help but take an instant dislike to. Rick Yancey

They were afraid the longer we pretended to be human, the more human we would become.”“ And who would want that?”“ I didn’t think I would, ” he admits. “Until I became one.”“ When you…‘woke up’ in Evan?”He shakes his head and says simply, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “When I woke up in you, Cassie. I wasn’t fully human until I saw myself in your eyes.” And then there are real human tears in his real human eyes, and it’s my turn to hold him while his heart breaks. My turn to see myself in his eyes. Somebody might say that I’m not the only one lying in the enemy’s arms. I am humanity, but who is Evan Walker? Human and Other. Both and neither. By loving me, he belongs to no one. He doesn’t see it that way. Rick Yancey

And John Kearns whispered into my ear: "Do you see it now? *You* are the nest. *You* are the hatchling. *You* are the chrysalis. *You* are the progeny. *You* are the rot that falls from the stars. All of us--you and I and poor, dear Pellinore. Behold the face of the magnificum, child. And despair." Though I was sickened by the sight, I looked. In the bower of the beast at the top of the world, I beheld the face of the magnificum, and I did not turn away. Rick Yancey

I want him to touch me again. I want to feel his hands, as soft as clouds. But I’m afraid if he touches me, all seven billion billion billion atoms that make up my body will blow apart and scatter across the universe. Rick Yancey

We regarded each other across an expanse wider than the universe, within a space thinner than a razor's edge. Rick Yancey

You haven't heard a damn word I've said. See, this is why I can't stand your kinds. You light your candles and mumble your latin spells and pray to a god who isn't there, doesn't care, or is just plain crazy or cruel or both. The world burns and you praise the asshole who either set it or let it. Rick Yancey

Crazy people. They never think they're crazy. Their craziness makes perfect sense to them. Rick Yancey

This place can't be heaven, it doesn't have the right vibe. Rick Yancey

I'm a little panicky when I realize he's not here. It's a lot easier to push down my doubt when he's with me. When I can see those eyes the color of melted chocolate and hear his deep voice that falls over me like a warm blanket on a cold night. Rick Yancey

The world is a clock winding down. I hear it in the wind’s icy fingers scratching against the window. I smell it in the mildewed carpeting and the rotting wallpaper of the old hotel. And I feel it in Teacup’s chest as she sleeps. The hammering of her heart, the rhythm of her breath, warm in the freezing air, the clock winding down. Rick Yancey

Let’s establish a code for when you want to go all creeper on me. One knock means you’d like to come in. Two means you’re just stopping by to spy on me while I sleep.” His eyes travel from my face to my shirt (which happens to be his shirt) to my bare legs, lingering a breath too long before returning to my face. His gaze is warm. My legs are cold. Then he knocks once on the jamb. But it’s the smile that gets him in. . Rick Yancey

Do you know a way out of here?” I ask Ben. Sammy’s more trusting than I am, but the idea’s worth exploring. Finding the escape pods–if they even exist–has always been the weakest part of my getaway plan. He nods. “Do you?”“ I know a way– I just don’t know the way to the way.”“ The way to the way? Okay.” He grins. He looks like hell, but the smile hasn’t changed a bit. It lights up the tunnel like a thousand-watt bulb. “I know the way and the way to the way. Rick Yancey

It wasn't a good fake smile. You could always tell when she was faking, because she didn't look friendly; she looked like she was going to throw up. Rick Yancey

The cold stars spun to the ancient rhythm, the august march of an everlasting symphony. They are old, the stars, and their memory is long. Rick Yancey

It's always been this way, I wanted to tell him. We bear the unbearable. We endure the unendurable. We do what must be done until we ourselves are undone. Rick Yancey

We have survived the death of our childhood. We are soldiers now, maybe the last soldiers who will ever fight, the Earth’s final and only hope, united as one in the spirit of vengeance. Rick Yancey

He lays me on the bed. I say, right before he kisses me again, “If you kiss me again, I’m going to knee you in the balls.” His hands are incredibly soft, like a cloud touching me.“ I won’t let you just…” He searches for the right word. “…fly away from me, Cassie Sullivan.”He blows out the candle beside the bed. I feel his kiss more intensely now, in the darkness of the room where his sister died. In the quiet of the house where his family died. In the stillness of the world where the life we knew before the Arrival died. He tastes my tears before I can feel them. Where there would be tears, his kiss.“ I didn’t save you, ” he whispers, lips tickling my eyelashes. “You saved me.” He repeats it over and over, until we fall asleep pressed against each other, his voice in my ear, my tears in his mouth.“ You saved me. Rick Yancey

Aren’t you coming with us?” I feel his hand on my cheek. I know what this means and I slap his hand away.“ You’re coming with us, Evan, ” I say.“ There’s something I have to do.”“ That’s right.” My hand flails for his in the dark. I find it and pull hard. “You have to come with us.”“ I’ll find you, Cassie. Don’t I always find you? I–”“Don’t, Evan. You don’t know you’ll be able to find me.”“ Cassie.” I don’t like the way he says my name. His voice is too soft, too sad, too much like a good-bye voice. “I was wrong when I said I was both and neither. I can’t be; I know that now. I have to choose.”“ Wait a minute, ” Ben says. “Cassie, this guy is one of them?”“ It’s complicated, ” I answer. “We’ll go over it later.” I grab Evan’s hand in both of mine and press it against my chest. “Don’t leave me aga. Rick Yancey

Promises are priceless, and a kiss is a kind of promise, too. Rick Yancey

Beside me the monstrumologist murmured, "I believe I am in hell, therefore I am there. Rick Yancey

He didn’t like to see animals in captivity. When he looked into their eyes, something in their eyes looked back at him. Rick Yancey

Despair is a wholly selfish response to fortune’s slings and arrows. Rick Yancey

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition. Rick Yancey

Ah. And then you kill him."" No, " Arkwright replied patiently. "We are British. We avoid murder if we can help it.{...} Rick Yancey

The nights did not come gently but seemed to slam down angrily upon the Earth. Rick Yancey

That's a stupid question, ' said Malachi. 'Because he didn't warn him. He didn't warn anyone.'' No, it's a philosophical question, ' Kearns corrected him. 'Which makes it useless, not stupid. Rick Yancey