Quotes from Cell

Stephen King ·  449 pages

Rating: (163.5K votes)


“At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens as all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“Man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“This is how a man looks when he's deciding that the risk of death is better than the risk of change.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“He said the mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell



“Clay said, "If they have flashlights like us, we can almost assume-"

"We can't assume anything," [Alice] said restlessly, querulously. "My father says assume makes an ass out of you and me. Get it, u and-"

"I get it," Clay said.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“Although neither the Freudians nor the Jungians come right out and say it, they strongly suggest that we may have a core, a single basic carrier wave, or-to use language with which Jordan is comfortable-a single line of written code which cannot be stripped.'
'The PD,' Jordan said. 'The prime directive'.
'Yes,' the Head agreed. 'At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“Three days ago we not only ruled the earth, we had survivor's guilt about all the other species we'd wiped out on our climb to the nirvana of round-the-clock cable news and microwave popcorn. Now we're the Flashlight People.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“Leave it at this: man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that get in his way.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“Can a mordern city burn,' he asked Tom. 'One made mostly of concrete and metal and glass? Could it burn the way Chicago did after Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern?”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell



“It would occur to him later that the body knows how to fight when it has to. That it’s a secret the body keeps, just as it does the secrets of how to run or jump a creek or throw a fuck or—quite likely—die when there’s no other choice. That under conditions of extreme stress it simply takes over and does what needs doing while the brain stands off to one side, unable to do anything but whistle and tap its foot”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“At half past three, in the ditch of the night, Alice said: “Oh, Mummy, too bad! Fading roses, this garden’s over.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“It'll be all right, Clay. Really." "So you say, but you have a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur." "That's true," Tom said, "but they're balanced out by poor self-image and ego menstruation at roughly six week intervals...”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“That tight little accent grated on Clay’s frayed nerves. He thought that if it had been a fart, it would have been the kind that comes out sounding like a party-horn blown by a kid with asthma.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“He did it with a teacher's natural assumptions: lecturing was his responsibility, interruption his privilege.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell



“En el fondo no somos homo sapiens, pues nuestro núcleo es la locura, y la directiva primordial, el asesinato. Lo que Darwin fue demasiado educado para expresar, amigos míos, es que no llegamos a dominar el mundo porque seamos los más inteligentes ni los más malvados, sino porque siempre hemos sido los cabrones más chiflados y asesinos de toda la selva.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“His cock swung from side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock on speed.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“have no interest in handing down an indictment of mankind. If I did, I’d point out that for every Michelangelo there’s a Marquis de Sade, for every Gandhi an Eichmann, for every Martin Luther King an Osama bin Laden. Leave it at this: man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.” He”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


“La inteligencia humana terminó por imponerse al instinto asesino, y la razón sofocó los impulsos más dementes de los hombres.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell


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About the author

Stephen King
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
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