Quotes from Richard Bachman

The sooner Harkness stopped walking, the sooner he could stop walking. That was the simple truth. That was logic. But something went deeper, a truer, more frightening logic. Harkness was a part of the group that Garraty was a part of, a segment of his subclan. Part of a magic circle that Garraty belonged to. And if one part of that circle could be broken, any part of it could be broken.

Look at that Barkovitch. He ain't in it to get no Prize. He's just walkin' to see other people die. He lives on it. When someone gets a ticket, he gets a little more go-power. It ain't enough. He'll dry up just like a leaf on a tree.

The first fact was that if Heidi hadn't picked that particular day to try out a little autoeroticism, Halleck would have been on top of his job and his responsibility as the operator of a motor vehicle

He's going to die, isn't he? Stebbins said. Sure, McVies answered. They've all been dying, didn't you know?

He's almost there now, McVries said at his elbow, startling him. When they start half-hoping someone will shoot them so they can rest their feet, they're not far away.

Brad looked at his wife with that expression of love that is the sole property of people who have been married over ten years.

And if a collection of bad cells no bigger than a walnut could destroy all those things, those things that are so personal that they can never be properly articulated, so personal you hardly dared admit their existence to yourself, what did that leave? How could you trust life again? How could you see it as anything more meaningful than a Saturday night demolition derby?

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

Then you can blame it on your parents,' I said, smiling. 'Won't that be a relief?

Craziness is only a matter of degree, and there are lots of people besides me who have the urge to roll heads. They go to stock-car races and the horror movies and the wrestling matches they have in Portland Expo. Maybe what she said smacked of all those things, but I admired her for saying out loud, all the same--the price of honesty is always high. She had an admirable grasp of the fundamentals. Besides, she was tiny and pretty.

The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing.

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

If people just took it a day at a time, they'd be a lot happier.

Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.

All places are the same unless your mind changes. There's no magic place to get your mind right. If you feel like shit, everything you see looks like shit.

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.

Another time, another place.

Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. But I didn't hold it against him. To err is only human, but it's divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.

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?

You were starting to sound a little like a Stephen King novel for a while there

Love is a fake!" Olson was blaring. "There are three great truths in the world and they are a good meal, a good screw, and a good shit, and that's all!

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.

I feel that if I'm going through this hellish decline, you should be going through one also . . . misery loves company, and I guess we've all got a streak of one hundred percent gold-plated bastard in our natures, tangled up so tightly with the good part of us that we can never get free of it.

He was going to make this happen. His feet and his head was set, and when he got that way, he always did what he said he was going to do. It was his pride. The only one he had.