Quotes from The Infinite Sea

“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, quote from The Infinite Sea

“When you look death in the eye and death blinks first, nothing seems impossible.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“It isn’t that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It’s that the truth is too hideous to face.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“No hope without faith, no faith without hope, no love without trust, no trust without love. Remove one and the entire human house cards collapses.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“I found you, but in finding you, I lost myself.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“Ha-ha. The dumb jock who can’t talk the Queen’s English. I swear to God, the next person who corrects my grammar gets punched in the face.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“Something weird," Ben said. "You would think, with ninety-nine percent of us gone, the two percent would get along better."
Um, that would be one percent, Parish.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“The world ended once. It will end again. The world ends, then the world comes back. The world always comes back.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“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, quote from The Infinite Sea

“You never know when the truth will come home. You can’t choose the time. The time chooses you.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“Somentimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and what happens is nobody's fault.You just want to feel bad so you'll feel better.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“But I don’t panic. I don’t bolt like a frightened gazelle. I am more than the sum of my fear. It isn’t fear that will defeat them. Not fear or faith or hope or even love, but rage.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“´Because love is irrational,´ I tell Vosh. ´It doesn´t follow rules. Not even its own rules. Love is the one thing in the universe that´s unpredictable.´”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“Some things, down to the smallest of things, are worth the sum of all things.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“I didn't know until then that rage had a taste and it tasted like your own blood.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“Maybe you reach a certain point in evolution where boredom is the greatest threat to your survival. Maybe this isn’t a planetary takeover at all, but a game. Like a kid pulling wings off flies.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“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, quote from The Infinite Sea

“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, quote from The Infinite Sea

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have; for both are infinite. —William Shakespeare”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“That's it," he said bitterly. "Cry, Cassie. Cry for her. Cry for all the children. They can't hear you and they can't see you and can't feel how really bad you feel, but cry for them. A tear for each of them, fill up the fucking ocean, cry.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“If you are human, there is no hope.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“The uncertainty of my own experience is crushing. I am drowning in an infinite sea. Sinking slowly, the weight of the lightless depths forcing me down, forcing the air from my lungs, squeezing the blood from my heart.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“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, quote from The Infinite Sea

“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, quote from The Infinite Sea

“I didn't just foster the delusions. I lived them. Even after the world crashed, I clung to them. But after he died, I told myself no more. No more brave fronts or false hopes or pretending everything's okay when nothing is. I thought I was being tough by pretending, calling it being optimistic, brave, keeping my head up or whatever bullshit seemed to fit the moment. That's not tough. That's the very definition of soft.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

“Life is full of little ironies, but it's also pockmarked with some the size of that big rock in Australia.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Infinite Sea

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Popular quotes

“Maria, lonely prostitute on a street of pain,
You, at least, hail me and speak to me
While a thousand others ignore my face.
You offer me an hour of love,
And your fees are not as costly as most.
You are the madonna of the lonely,
The first-born daughter in a world of pain.
You do not turn fat men aside,
Or trample on the stuttering, shy ones,
You are the meadow where desperate men
Can find a moment's comfort.

Men have paid more to their wives
To know a bit of peace
And could not walk away without the guilt
That masquerades as love.
You do not bind them, lovely Maria, you comfort them
And bid them return.
Your body is more Christian than the Bishop's
Whose gloved hand cannot feel the dropping of my blood.
Your passion is as genuine as most,
Your caring as real!

But you, Maria, sacred whore on the endless pavement of pain,
You, whose virginity each man may make his own
Without paying ought but your fee,
You who know nothing of virgin births and immaculate conceptions,
You who touch man's flesh and caress a stranger,
Who warm his bed to bring his aching skin alive,
You make more sense than stock markets and football games
Where sad men beg for virility.
You offer yourself for a fee--and who offers himself for less?

At times you are cruel and demanding--harsh and insensitive,
At times you are shrewd and deceptive--grasping and hollow.
The wonder is that at times you are gentle and concerned,
Warm and loving.
You deserve more respect than nuns who hide their sex for eternal love;
Your fees are not so high, nor your prejudice so virtuous.
You deserve more laurels than the self-pitying mother of many children,
And your fee is not as costly as most.

Man comes to you when his bed is filled with brass and emptiness,
When liquor has dulled his sense enough
To know his need of you.
He will come in fantasy and despair, Maria,
And leave without apologies.
He will come in loneliness--and perhaps
Leave in loneliness as well.
But you give him more than soldiers who win medals and pensions,
More than priests who offer absolution
And sweet-smelling ritual,
More than friends who anticipate his death
Or challenge his life,
And your fee is not as costly as most.

You admit that your love is for a fee,
Few women can be as honest.
There are monuments to statesmen who gave nothing to anyone
Except their hungry ego,
Monuments to mothers who turned their children
Into starving, anxious bodies,
Monuments to Lady Liberty who makes poor men prisoners.
I would erect a monument for you--
who give more than most--
And for a meager fee.

Among the lonely, you are perhaps the loneliest of all,
You come so close to love
But it eludes you
While proper women march to church and fantasize
In the silence of their rooms,
While lonely women take their husbands' arms
To hold them on life's surface,
While chattering women fill their closets with clothes and
Their lips with lies,
You offer love for a fee--which is not as costly as most--
And remain a lonely prostitute on a street of pain.

You are not immoral, little Maria, only tired and afraid,
But you are not as hollow as the police who pursue you,
The politicians who jail you, the pharisees who scorn you.
You give what you promise--take your paltry fee--and
Wander on the endless, aching pavements of pain.
You know more of universal love than the nations who thrive on war,
More than the churches whose dogmas are private vendettas made sacred,
More than the tall buildings and sprawling factories
Where men wear chains.
You are a lonely prostitute who speaks to me as I pass,
And I smile at you because I am a lonely man.”
― James Kavanaugh, quote from There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

“Most people have difficulty thinking of themselves as just another animal. They refuse to face the fact that 96% of what can be found in their bodies can also be found inside a pig or a horse or that our DNA is 97. 5% identical to that of a gorilla and 98. 4% to that of a chimpanzee. The only thing that makes us different from other animals is our ability to think and make forward plans.”
― Allan Pease, quote from Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It

“I know what love feels like, but this, this man... fuck me. Steals my breath. Knots me up. Torches me."
"No, this is what denying love feels like, man. Why you denying your heart?”
― Adrian Phoenix, quote from In the Blood

“My youngest brother killed a lynx yesterday,” Rose said.
“Apparently it came into his territory and left some spray marks. He skinned it, smeared himself in its blood, and put its pelt on his shoulders like a cape. And that’s how he came dressed for breakfast.”
Cerise drank some beer. “My sister kills small animals and hangs their
corpses on a tree, because she thinks she is a monster and she’s convinced
we’ll eventually banish her from the house. They’re her rations. Just in case.”
Rose blinked. “I see. I think we’re going to get along just fine, don’t you?”
“I think so, yes.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Bayou Moon

“Would you do me a favor milord? Be a boorish ass again. (Rowena)”
― Kinley MacGregor, quote from A Dark Champion

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