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


Video

About the author

Stephen King
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Then don't give up on us. Love me, damn it. Please baby. Let me love you.”
― Meredith Wild, quote from Hardpressed


“2. It is admitted that when in recent times the appearance of our Saviour Jesus Christ had become known to all men there immediately made its appearance a new nation; a nation confessedly not small, and not dwelling in some corner of the earth, but the most numerous and pious of all nations, indestructible and unconquerable, because it always receives assistance from God. This nation, thus suddenly appearing at the time appointed by the inscrutable counsel of God, is the one which has been honored by all with the name of Christ.”
― Paul L. Maier, quote from Eusebius: The Church History


“It’s hard to explain,” she says. “I would say that I’m more spiritual than religious at this point.” “What does that even mean?” I stare upward at the gleaming stars. “To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality.”
― Bill Konigsberg, quote from The Porcupine of Truth


“Thinking, not for the first time, that life should come with a trapdoor. Just a little exit hatch you could disappear through when you´d utterly and completely mortified yourself. Or when you had spontaneous zit eruptions.

“Good book?” he asked, taking it from her and reading the subtitle, “A Guide for Good Girls Who (Sometimes) Want to Be Bad,” out loud.

But life did not come with a trapdoor. ”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Prom Nights from Hell


“Happy, Muriel? No, not happy. Your aim is wrong. There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane


Interesting books

Flight Behavior
(69.2K)
Flight Behavior
by Barbara Kingsolver
Shades of Blood
(3.4K)
Shades of Blood
by Samantha Young
Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes
(24.5K)
Twenty-Eight and a H...
by Denise Grover Swank
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
(240.8K)
Fantastic Beasts and...
by J.K. Rowling
Couples
(4.1K)
Couples
by John Updike
Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie
(4.4K)
Better Than Sex: Con...
by Hunter S. Thompson

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.