David Wong Quotes

I reached out and, with a small move of my body, did something that would change my life forever. I gently moved Amy aside and stepped down ahead of her, putting myself between her and the shadows.

Here's exclusive Channel 5 video of a local man having his brain eaten by a winged gremlin. Local gremlin experts warn that -

After being raised as an evangelical Christian, I for years assumed that Christianity was the default - there were Christians, and then there were weirdos. I was shocked when, in college, I found that some people get offended when you tell them, for instance, that their recovery from surgery was a 'miracle.'

You know, I observed a man who masturbated until he bled. Did he want to do that?

My feet had never been so bare. Those little naked toes.That spider thing probably looks at those like the ears on a chocolate bunny.

We fixed him just by telling him that he wasn't crazy, that the horrors he was seeing were real. He seemed oddly comforted by that. He was a lawyer.

We moved in silence for a moment and I said, "How did we screw this all up so badly, John?"
He shook his head. "We always find a way.

Saving the world, that's Hollywood bullshit. The best I can do is save a little bit of the world, this little corner that me and this girl stand in. And every time I think that, somewhere I can hear laughter. Them laughing. Like the game is over.

It was a sunrise, a kid's sight of snowfall on a school morning. Hope. That all this can turn out okay, that somehow a tide this big and black can be turned back. Hope like a wildfire, thoughts of presents under a Christmas tree and a smell of cookies coming from a kitchen and a certain look in a girl's eyes that lights you up inside. That beautiful border between nightmare and morning when you realize that all of the monsters menacing you have evaporated like smoke, leaving behind only the warm blanket and the pale sunlight of a Saturday dawn.

I once saw Arnold Schwarzenegger kill a man in a movie by grabbing his head and twisting it until the neck broke. Was that difficult? Could a man do it without a lot of practice?

Do they know they make the honey for you? Or do they work tirelessly because they think its their own choice?

Fred whispered, "Okay. If I don't come back, and say they don't got my body, like if Justin eats me or somethin', tell everybody you don't know what happened. Make it mysterious. And then a year later spread rumors that you've seen me wanderin' around town. That way I'll be like fuckin' Bigfoot, everybody claiming to have seen me here and there. Legend of Fred Chu." John nodded, as if he were committing this to memory. He lit his own firebombs, glanced up at me and asked,"You got any final requests, in case this don't end well?" "Yeah. Avenge my death.

One more victim sucked in by John. You get into the room with him and you just fall into a warm pool of beer and video games and penis jokes, staring at the universe with him and saying, Do you believe this shit?

The gun without the training just means you've given your attacker a free gun.

I know the Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider can't fly because if it could, it would have a different name entirely. We would call it "sir" because it would be the dominant species on the planet. None of us would leave the house unless a Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider said it was okay

I was going back and reading Marconi's last book again, and there's this part that
always gets me. He points out that the amount of the universe a human can experience is
statistically, like, zero percent. You've got this huge universe, trillions of trillions of miles of empty
space between galaxies, and all a human can perceive is a little tunnel a few feet wide and a few feet
long in front of our eyes. So he says we don't really live in the universe at all, we live inside our
brains. All we can see is like a blurry little pinhole in a blindfold, and the rest is filled in by our
imagination. So whatever we think of the world, whether you think the world is cruel or good or
cold or hot or wet or dry or big or small, that comes entirely from inside your head and nowhere
else.

The floor was littered with paper cups and candy wrappers and cigarette butts and other teenager droppings. I saw a used condom under my shoe.

But here's the thing - lying would have become useless thousands of years ago if countering it was as simple as dismissing the liars completely. The really good liars were like chemists, brewing formulas that were mostly truth, the toxins undetectable in the mixture.

John's old Caddie had a huge engine that would qualify as a human rights violation if built today. It roared down the road, chugging gas and farting a blue cloud of dinosaur souls.

SOCIETY IS DOOMED for one very simple reason: it takes dozens of men working months with millions of dollars in materials to build a building, but only one dumb-ass with a bomb to bring it down.

You see, Frank found out the hard way that the dark things lurking in the night don't haunt old houses or abandoned ships. They haunt minds.

John, let me make one thing clear," Jim said, cutting me off in his most stern, evangelical voice. "Every man is blessed with his gifts from the Lord. One of mine happens to be a penis large enough that, if it had a penis of its own, my penis' penis would be larger than your penis." ...
... "Fuck all of you," John retorted. "You don't even exist. We're all just a figment of my cock's imagination.

Cynicism does not cause inaction..

That whole bit was something John had come up with, the man having a terrible habit of carrying out his drunken 3:00 A.M. ideas even after daylight and sobriety came. It was always 3:00 A.M. for John.

But remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.

Got it. Look, the way I see it, two people walk in the restaurant, a Methodist and an atheist. The Methodist says, I'm not going to tip because I just came from church and I've already done my good deed for the day. The atheist says, I'm not tipping because life is meaningless and we're all just animals. To me, they're both members of the same religion, because they're doing the same thing. Whatever little story they tell themselves to justify it is irrelevant. It goes the other way, too - if a Muslim and a Scientologist come in and both leave a tip, they're on the same team. It doesn't matter to me if one did it because of Allah and the other was obeying the ghost of Tom Cruise, what matters is it resulted in doing the right thing.

You want to walk into that funeral and have every dude in that room whip their head around and say, 'God-damn them is some fine-ass titties. I got to find me a divorce lawyer in the next five minutes.

The most powerful impression a person can make is that they don't care if they make an impression.

Let me give you a tip: if you're ever the victim of a terrible crime - like, say, your kid goes missing - and you see the cops consulting with a couple of white trash–looking dipshits in their late twenties, it's time to worry. It's not because John and I are incompetent at what we do - and I assure you, we are - but because you need to start asking yourself a very hard question. Not "Will I get my child back?" but "Do I want to get my child back?

No. He says when you're dealing with any kids of supernatural beings, Gods and Devils and angels, you tend to think about them like hurricanes or earthquakes, some kind of mindless force of nature. But if they're real, then they have minds. They know your name. So even reading about the Devil tips him off, he knows instantly he's being read about and that you're somebody he may have to deal with. And I'm thinking what you did in Vegas went way, way beyond that."
"What 'I' did? What about us? We were both there."
"Yeah but I cut my hair since then. They probably think that was a different guy.

You have to talk through the bratwurst from now on.

That ability to see the right choice, but not until several hours have passed since making the wrong one? That's what makes a person a dumbass, folks.

Some would have doubted their sanity at this point, but by now the part of my mind that issued doubts about my sanity had melted from overuse.

And no one cares. You kick and scream and cry out into the darkness,
and no answer comes. You rage against the unfathomable injustice and two
blocks away some guy watches a baseball game and scratches his balls.

The guy next to him looked like he had covered his body in glue and rolled through a knife store. At the bottom of the feed was a logo that said LEAGUE OF BADASS.

No, I don't, like, play an instrument or anything.I'm just ... well, you saw me at the beginning there. I was the guy that fell down and died.

You know how sometimes when you're drifting off to sleep you feel that jolt, like you were falling and caught yourself at the last second? It's nothing to be concerned about, it's usually just the parasite adjusting its grip.

Snap. Ka-chunk. That's how I spell the sound of a doorknob turning.

Whoops,' said John. 'I tossed our ball into another universe.'
'You wanna go home?'
'Yeah, just let me get my ball.

I said I heard them, it's like a, like a chittering I guess. You hear it, you don't hear it really but you just get the sound in the middle of your head, like an itch. It's not so much like a swarm of bees but more like a crowd, a crowd at a concert because you can pick out words and, I say it out loud and it sounds insane, but you can hear them talking to each other, coordinating. And more than that, you can hear their hate.

But in those first hours after you take it, your brain is tuned in like nothing you can imagine. Eyes like the Hubble telescope, sensing light that's not even on the spectrum. You might be able to read minds, make time stop, cook pasta that's exactly right every time.

Please don't not panic!" The

I reached for the knob. At the same moment it began to melt and transform, turning pink and finally taking the shape of a flaccid penis. It flopped softly against the door, like a man was cramming it through the knob hole from the other side.
I turned back to John and said, 'That door cannot be opened.

The channel got switched to Fox News and a panel of experts was desperately trying to fill airtime by finding ways to rephrase the nothing that they knew, over and over again.

John cursed himself. Or rather, he
cursed the past version of himself for so
thoughtlessly screwing over the current
version of himself.

Here's where things get hazy. John claims that the men hauling him away from the scene were escorted by other men carrying submachine guns, though when pressed, he admitted that they may have been flashlights. Either way, John says the men threw him down and intended to execute him, at which point he kicked one of the men in the face and backflipped to his feet. He then wrestled away the man's gun and "dick-whipped" him with it. I am unclear as to whether or not this means he struck the man in the groin or merely slapped him in the same manner in which he would slap a person with his dick. I never ask John to clarify such things. Anyway, he said he swung again and slammed another man's skull with the gun, so hard it "made the batteries fly out.

A lot of unemployment, though. We've got two closed factories and a rotting shopping mall that went bankrupt before it ever opened. We're not far from Kentucky, which marks the unofficial border to the South, so one sees more than enough pickup trucks decorated with stickers of Confederate flags and slogans proclaiming their brand of truck is superior to all others. Lots of country music stations, lots of jokes that contain the word "nigger." A sewer system that occasionally backs up into the streets for some unknown reason. Lots and lots of stray dogs around, many with grotesque deformities.

Wong is the most common surname in the world ... "
" ... John is the most common first name in the world."
"That's right," I said. "And yet there's not a single person named John Wong. I looked it up."
"You know, I work with a John Wong.

Well, I'm going to tell you the best and the worst thing you've ever heard. Heroes aren't born. You just go out there and grind it out. You fail and you look foolish and you just keep grinding. There is nothing else. There is no 'chosen one,' there is no destiny, nobody wakes up one day and finds out they're amazing at something. There's just slamming your head into the wall, refusing to take no for an answer. Being relentless, until either the wall or your head breaks. You want to be a hero? You don't have to make some grand decision. There's no inspirational music, there's no montage. You just don't quit.

At this point two elderly security guards in parkas, the guys who normally work the front desk at the plant, asked John to step behind the tape. John claims that here he told the guards that he could not speak English and when that failed to persuade them, he fa ... ked a violent seizure. I am unclear as to the purpose of this part of his plan. John flung himself down and began rolling around in the snow, thrashing his limbs about and screaming "EL SEIZURE!!! NO ES BUENO!!!" in a Mexican accent.

Something coming back from the dead was almost always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies.

Alcohol was the reason we formed complex civilizations, and having to deal with the complexities of civilization is the reason most of us need alcohol.

Guys like him, the ones who grip the Bible so tight they leave fingernail grooves, they're the ones who are the most scared of their dark side. Always going too far the other way, fighting for the Lord, often just because it gives them an excuse to fight.

Somewhere, Charles Darwin nodded and smiled a knowing smile.

John's coffee, which tasted like battery acid someone had pissed in then cursed at for several hours.

Okay, can somebody quickly just summarize for the shotgun department who it's okay and not okay to shoot?

What humans want most of all, is to be right. Even if we're being right about our own doom. If we believe there are monsters around the next corner ready to tear us apart, we would literally prefer to be right about the monsters, than to be shown to be wrong in the eyes of others and made to look foolish.

Cops do this every day, rifling closets and digging through your dildo drawer.

Welcome to freakdom, Dave. It'll be time to start a Web site soon, where you'll type out everything in one huge paragraph.

I turned, ran, fired the shotgun into the air and shouted, "Bomb! There's a bomb in the fountain! Everybody run for your lives! Please don't not panic!

Around us, the disembodied human limbs were piling up, forming a circle around the fountain, fusing themselves to each other like Satan's LEGO set.

Every man is blessed with his gifts from the Lord. One of mine happens to be a penis large enough that, if it had a penis of its own, my penis's penis would be larger than your penis.

There was a faded brown stain on the carpet and I wondered if a patient had once taken a shit in here in the middle of a session. I

I cursed and rubbed my forehead. The radio sang its bigotry in perfect '80s pop harmony. Let's send 'em aaallllllll ba-ack to Aaaaafrica . . . I reached down to the knob, to find the radio was already off. Here we fucking go.

I don't see it right now - maybe it was in a different book - but anyway, he says that when you read the Bible, the Devil looks back at you through the pages."
"What, like his Bible was possessed? Holy shit, he must have been the worst priest ever.

People like me know that there is no magic. There is only the grind. Work looks like magic to those unwilling to do it.

I shoved the monster into the water, held it under, screamed "Die!" or something to that effect. After a few seconds it stopped moving and black sauce oozed out of it like an oil slick. Dr. Marconi got close enough so I could finally hear him. He said, "They're trying to get into the water! Don't let them!

And - holy shit was this song bad. It was like the singer was stabbing my ear with a dagger made of dried turds.

Light-headed, my body trembling from shoes to shoulders in random spells, like I swallowed a vibrator. It's always like this when I'm on the sauce. I dosed six hours ago.

Anyhow, Molly died, in the way that all really good things die, fast and brutal and for no apparent reason.

Antidepressants. The thought of this girl actually being depressed made me want to grab the whole planet and throw it into the sun. Well, more than usual anyway.

Shitload said, "His name is Korrok the Slavemaster from the eighth plane, also known in some realms as Baa'aaa'aaa'aab and in others as the Lord Zanthk All-Bzzki'l Shadd'uuul'l L'luuu'ddahs L'ikzzb-lla Khtnaz.

Zoey didn't want to be paranoid, but there was something about the man in the loincloth made of charred doll heads that made her nervous.

Falconer was wearing his street clothes - jeans, a black turtleneck and an empty shoulder holster under his armpit. Cowboy boots. Little bit of beard stubble. John wondered if the guy would walk from one end of the street to the other without winding up covered in bitches.

I picked up the phone and dialed up John on his cell. One ring, and then-
"I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, VINNY!"
"John?"
"Oh, Dave. Sorry. I had been having a heated argument here on my phone and then I hung up in disgust. Then when the phone rang I just assumed, without checking, that it was the person I was having an argument with so I just blindly shouted insults into the phone. How embarrassing."
"I'm getting sick of that one, John.

Thus, one of the awful things I can admit about myself is that the two years I spent with Jennifer live in my mind mostly as a series of frantic, breathy memories. Clawing hands tugging off clothes, heartbeat thumping in my ears, fingernails digging down my back. salty tastes lingering in my mouth. It's biology. It's hormones. As time passes I can recall fewer and fewer of our conversations and I couldn't give you the details of our five most-fun dates (though I have a fairly graphic vision of how each of them ended).

If upon hearing this you pump your fist and wink knowingly, you can kiss my ass. She was a good friend to me. She put up with my bullshit and at times not even I can put up with my bullshit. But all that is gone and what is left is a big, black hole where the sex used to be.

What's up. This is Dave, the one you saw in your hallway. He's not a psychotic killer or anything," he lied

I glanced at Badly Drawn Jesus, then pulled the gun from my pocket. On Judgment Day, I'd be able to proudly state that when I thought the hordes of Hell were coming for a local girl, I stood ready to shoot at them with a small-caliber pistol.

That's what life is. Adjustment.

Tried to escape, to block out the fact that I was being eaten alive by arachnids. For some reason the only thing I could replace it with was the image of being eaten by tiny clowns.

With a bassy thump and a smell like burnt sulfur, Shitload farted himself far into the air.

Keep driving," said a soft voice in my ear. "She will not bite if you keep driving."
Fuck that. Fuck that idea like the fucking Captain of the Thai Fuck Team fucking at the fucking Tour de Fuck.

You know the Tower of Babel, right? You went to Sunday School?""Yeah, sure. In ancient times everybody on earth spoke the same language, then they decided to build a tower that would reach all the way up to heaven. Then God cursed everybody on the job site to each speak a different language to mess them up.

What, then, is the soul but a prisoner of your flesh? An undying yet constrained energy, bound and enslaved within a shuffling, steadily rotting suit of tissue and savage needs?

You know what the scariest part is about people like him? Everything he's doing makes perfect sense in his own mind.

He stared at the gadget in his hand and said, So it's a magnet for cats? Hey! It's a pussy mag -

We've gone from, in the '50s and '60s, being very optimistic about the future, where the future is all spaceships and The Jetsons and flying cars, to where we were just sure the future was going to be a massive pile of rubble.

There are two types of people on planet Earth, Batman and Iron Man. Batman has a secret identity, right? So Bruce Wayne has to walk around every second of every day knowing that if somebody finds out his secret, his family is dead, his friends are dead, everyone he loves gets tortured to death by costumed supervillains. And he has to live with the weight of that secret every day. But not Tony Stark, he's open about who he is. He tells the world he's Iron Man, he doesn't give a shit. He doesn't have that shadow hanging over him, he doesn't have to spend energy building up those walls of lies around himself. You're one or the other - either you're one of those people who has to hide your real self because it would ruin you if it came out, because of your secret fetishes or addictions or crimes, or you're not one of those people. And the two groups aren't even living in the same universe.

John jolted awake to find himself staring down a shotgun wielded by his greatest enemy: himself.

I said to John, "You know that if you walked around the world, your hat would travel thirty-one feet farther than your shoes?" John said, "I dunno, Dave, but before we make a bomb I have to shave half the dog." I nodded. He got up, called to Molly and herded her into my bathroom. I wondered when the soy sauce would take effect.

I want no part of this nonsense. This whole city is a butt that farts horror.

I had seen that look before, on the faces of tourists visiting the Texas Book Depository in Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald took the shots at JFK. I took that tour and met some conspiracy buffs, all of us standing at the gunman's window and looking down to the spot where the motorcade passed. It's right there below the window, an easy shot at a slow-moving car. No mystery, just a kid and a rifle and a tragedy. They came looking for dark and terrible revelations and instead found out something even more dark and terrible: that their lives were trite and boring.

Tyler reacted to this for some reason, looking at John with a "when are people gonna learn" look, and then he spat on the ground. Tobacco spitting is a kind of nonverbal communication in many parts of the Midwest. He must have spilled his coffee a lot as a kid because he had one of those big spill-proof mugs, the kind that flare way out at the bottom. It looked like he was speaking into a megaphone every time he took a drink. I

No. We talked about this. I'm going home to eat a pie.

The situation has a real Lovecraft feel to it. Though, you know, if you come over it'll be more of an Anne Rice situation. If you know what I mean."
"Who's-"
"Because you're gay.

What is it with rich people thinking they can starve the poor into good behavior?

From day one it was like society was this violent, complicated dance and everybody had taken lessons but me. Knocked to the floor again, climbing to my feet each time, bloody and humiliated. Always met with disapproving faces, waiting for me to leave so I'd stop fucking up the party.
The wanted to push me outside, where the freaks huddled in the cold. Out there with the misfits, the broken, the glazed-eye types who can only watch as the normals enjoy their shiny new cars and careers and marriages and vacations with the kids.
The freaks spend their lives shambling around, wondering how they got left out, mumbling about conspiracy theories and bigfoot sightings. Their encounters with the world are marked by awkward conversations and stifled laughter, hidden smirks and rolled eyes. And worst of all, pity.

And don't put a bunch of bullshit in my mouth, or get cute and try to make me look stupid. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the salon to have my pubic hair straightened and dyed white so that my dick looks like Santa Claus." He closed the door, farting loudly all the way to his car. I went

If Zoey Ashe had known she was being stalked by a man who intended to kill her and then slowly eat her bones, she would have worried more about that and less about getting her cat off the roof.

It had the tangled floor plan common to all hospitals, seemingly designed by someone who believed in the healing power of watching confused visitors aimlessly wander around hallways.