Jonathan Maberry Quotes

A wise man once said that we can't make anyone feel or do anything. We can throw things into the wind, but it's up to each person to decide how they want to react, where they want to stand when things fall.

With 'Extinction Machine,' I wanted to start some conversations about whether we're alone in the universe and what that might mean.

She looked like a character from a video game. One of those improbably busty, impossibly well-armed superchicks who could do acrobatics and hit the kill zone even while firing guns from both hands during a cartwheel.
"You look fucking ridiculous," she told herself.

Yippie ki-yay and all that shit"

- Desdemona Fox

Sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage.

It's easier to be a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.

That's stupid."
"That's people.

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I fished inside my head for something, some way to prove it. And those strange words floated to the surface of my need. In as clear a
voice as l could, l looked at Prospero and said, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

A sword by itself is not evil. A sword can be used to slay an enemy, or release a suffering friend into the darkness. A sword can cut ropes that bind the helpless. A raised sword can be a threat or it can be a symbol of leadership ... A weapon, my children, is good or evil depending on the intention of whoever holds it.

But there never was a country, no matter how noble or well-intentioned, that wasn't infected by a greedy and power-hungry few.

The voice that answered did not belong to the beautiful woman who'd hired me last time. The voice was male. Nasal, high-pitched, fussy. If a Chihuahua could talk, it would be like that.

Often it was the most unlikely people who found within themselves a spark of something greater. It was probably always there, but most people are never tested, and they go through their whole lives without ever knowing that when things are at their worst, they are at their best.

Suffering is easier to endure when shared.

Rape is, to me, no different than murder. It kills a part of the victim's soul.

That's got to be Nix," Benny said as he pulled the door open. "Hey, sweetie ... "
Morgie Mitchell and Lou Chong stood on the black porch.
"Um," said Chong, "hello to you, too, sugar lumps.

You, however, are a psycho bitch who shot my dog.

Like most writers, I read deeply into the genre in which I write.

Zoms never tired.

There are different kinds of predators. There are the kinds who target the weak. And there are those with more of a Dexter vibe who don't lose sleep if a child abuser has a hard time on the way to the station.

When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world.
And there's nothing wrong with my skills.

The whole world turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet ...

Well, maybe that would have happened if the world hadn't ended.
It did. The world ended.
On a friday.

Well, she sure don't hold the deed on grief and loss, son. We all been mussed and mauled by bad times. But that girl's done gone and shut down. I met gray people with more personality." She tapped her temple with a finger. "I'm beginning to suspect there ain't nobody home.

Sing it like the midnight wind, Sing it like a prayer; Sing it on to the way to hell, Them blues'll take you there. - Oren Morse, Dead Man's Song

There are such moments in a life. Solitary seconds on which the reality of what life means pivots and turns from a dead end toward a road of untrodden grass that stretches on forever.

Tom adjusted his sword and checked his knives and his pistol. If there had been anyone to see his face, they would have seen a man at peace with himself and the world. And if they were wise they would know that such a man was the most dangerous of all opponent - one who fights to preserve love rather than perpetuate hate.

Time crawled on as if its legs were broken.

Wolverine is a world-weary old warrior. His rage issue notwithstanding, I see him as someone with the tortured soul of a poet, but one who has seen too many friends and lovers die. Even with that, he has grown into a leader and a true hero.

Hell was something the Lost Girl knew. She has lived it all her life.

There was a sliver of moon and a splash of stars, and the light outlined her face and glistened on the tears that ran like mercury down her cheeks.

You can learn much about an enemy when you watch him win. We will watch and learn . . . and plan.

It's important to know the past, but your survival depends on knowing the present.

Apple of My Eye is a twisted collection of short stories by Amy Grech, including the sexy and deadly title story that makes you want to stay home with the door locked and the lights on. Grech's stories are sinister, sneaky, convoluted and dangerous - and absolutely not to be missed!
- Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author of
Ghost Road Blues and Dead Man's Song

The word "impossible" used to mean something. It was a line that couldn't be crossed. It was the outer edge of the safe zone.
I can't find that line anymore

I don't want to kill you and you don't want to be dead.

Benny Imura was appalled to learn that the Apocalypse came with homework.
"Why do we have to study this stuff?" he demanded. "We already know what happened. People started turning into zoms, the zoms ate just about everyone, everyone who dies becomes a zom, so the moral of this tale is: Try not to die.

Know your enemy. The more you know about them, the less easily they can surprise you. And by studying them you might identify a weakness or vulnerability.

I'm self-aware enough to know that I have a somewhat fractured personality. Not exactly multiple personality disorder, but clearly there were different drivers at the wheel depending on my mood, and depending on my needs. Over

Suddenly we were in outer space. Aboard a rusty old piece of junk freighter. Far away. And in real trouble.

There are moments that define a person's whole life. Moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are moments ungoverned by happenstance, untroubled by luck. These are the moments in which a person earns the right to live, or not.

It's horrible, and we humans, just as always, will be the cause. Screw up the water. Fuck up the air. Cut down the trees and shit on the world. We'll call it science. We'll call it sport.

And that made him wonder if a person who is forced into bad situations over and over again when they're too weak or helpless to do anything about it will eventually make bad choices of their own simply because they've become habituated to them.

Quick-Draw Carl, who still wore the broad-brimmed brown hat of his legendary dad, Sheriff Rick.

The world's clock had run down, and haste was irrelevant.

He knew that these creatures were dead, that they were reanimated echoes who wore the disguise of the people they had once been, but Tom's words rang in his mind. They used to be people. How could he strike them? How could he hurt them? Children, women, old people. Lost souls.

He never did get right all the way again. And every once in a while he'd come down all bitey.

Shooting a pistol while running with any accuracy at all is next to impossible. They train us at the Academy to do it at a walk. Slow yourself down, focus on the target. Be relentless, but be accurate. Nobody ever won a gunfight by missing what they were aiming at.

Stabbing is for suckers who want to die.

I love weird science. I love weird action. I love weird characters.

Making playlists can kill a whole afternoon for me. I like building very specific playlists for new writing projects. In a strange way, choosing certain songs is part of the process of plotting the book out. I pick songs that I think with resonate with characters, their personality quirks, relationship dynamics, action scenes, and so on.

I have been an Avengers fan since the middle 1960s. I grew up with them, and I've imagined a hundred different versions of an Avengers movie. I think I even have a script I wrote back in eighth grade, 'Avengers vs. the Mole Man.' Truly dreadful, but a work of love.

I'd put two .45 slugs in him from fifteen feet. Pretty much does the trick. If it doesn't then your only logical ammunition upgrade is Kryptonite. But

When people ask me about what I learned from martial arts, I don't talk about favorite punches or kicks, or about fights won or lost. I talk about learning self-discipline, about ethics and manners and benevolence and fairness.

Yo! Deadheads," he yelled, waving his sword to taunt them. "Nice try, but you're messing with Benny-freaking-Imura, zombie killer. Booyah!

There were more of them out there. More walkers. And I was being asked to step up and be ... what? Some kind of Captain Heroism who would lead the boys in the Red, White, and Blue to victory? What was I getting myself into? This wasn't task force duty, this wasn't even SWAT-team level. I'd never even smelled anything this big before and now I was expected to train and lead a black ops team? How frigging insane was this? Why were they asking me? I'm just a cop. Where are the guys who actually do this for a living? How come none of them were here? Where's James Bond and Jack Bauer? Why me, of all people?

They held each other and wept as the night closed its fist around their tiny shelter, and the world below them seethed with killers both living and dead.

Benny Imura sat in the dark and spoke with monsters.
It was like that every day.
It had become the pattern of his life. Shadows and blood. And monsters.
Everywhere.
Monsters.

Walls, towns, rules, and day-to-day life doesn't make us civilized ... That's organization and ritual. Civilization lives in our hearts and heads or it doesn't exist at all.

When I was in middle school, the librarian there was secretary for a couple of groups of professional writers. She introduced me to Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, and I became very friendly with them over a period of two years. Both of them were very generous with their time, guidance and advice.

I could feel the shakes starting to come back, so I washed my face, rinsed my mouth out with handfuls of tap water, pasted on my best I-didn't-just-kill-a-zombie expression, and left with my coffee.

He's a ghost, not a carnival magician.
-Benny Imura

Leaving is never easy," said Tom. "Even when you know you have to go.

Dez, on the other hand, was pure backcountry Pennsylvania; a blue-eyed blonde who could have been a model for fitness equipment if not for what JT personally viewed as an overactive redneck gene.

Things said and done innocently should never be used as weapons.

Every single zom, every man, woman and child, no matter how decayed or how frightening they are, no matter how dangerous they are - they were all once real people. They had names, and lives, and personalities, and families. They had dreams and goals. They had pasts and they thought they had futures, but something came and took that away from them.

Evil never dies. It merely waits. And it grows stronger in the dark.

Guilt and rage, hatred and fear were pathways to weakness and clumsy choices.

UNMARKED is both gorgeous and hideous. A frightening and disturbing tale spun with great beauty. Absolutely riveting.

Except that death collected everyone. Death is like that. Relentlessly efficient.

Get your butt in a chair and write. If it comes out weak or bad or clunky or ordinary, then accept that this happens to everyone. Everyone. Get it down, get it done, and fix it in the rewrite. Just like everyone from Stephen King to J. K. Rowling to Chuck Palahniuk does.

Some people never want to be part of the solution. All they want to do is bitch and whine and create complications for other people. You

Even though Tom wasn't moving, he seemed to be a little farther away. For the first time Benny realized that there were other people in the hallways. They were indistinct, more of a sense of movement in the gray light rather than specific shapes. He thought he recognized one of them, though.
"Chong?"
The figure stopped moving, but he stood with his back to Benny.
"Tom-is that Chong?"
"Is that Chong?" Benny asked again. "Is ... is he going with you?

One of the most delightful parts of being a writer is connecting with people via social media. I devote ten minutes out of every writing hour to Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other sites. I don't use assistants for that. It's me and all of my friends, fans, readers, and colleagues on the crazyboat.

What's with the shorts?" "There's a new fitness trainer. Jamaican gal . . . tall, gorgeous." "And . . . ?" "Bike shorts show off my package." "Jesus Christ." "Jealousy is an ugly thing, Joe." "Get in the fucking car.

[Therapist and friend, with a voice like Raul Julia during his Gomez Adam's days] Rudy studied my face, "I have a two o'clock open on Tuesday."
I sighed, "Yeah, ok. Tuesday at two."
He nodded, pleased. "Bring Starbucks."
"Sure, what do you want?"
"My usual. Iced half-caf ristretto quad grade two-pump raspberry two percent no whip light ice with caramel drizzle three-and-a-half-pump white mocha."
"Is any of that actually coffee?"
"More or less."
"And you think I'm damaged …

When Tony lost it, it would be up to Ruger to take Lady Death by the tits and giver a good tweak. That's how he saw it. Give Lady Death's tits a good tweak.

Call my cynical...but I've come to believe that most people who follow a total wack job aren't always true believers. They just like to follow. They like the perks. Makes them feel strong. Kind of weakens your faith in fruitcake fanatics.

Spotting the same car three times could have been a coincidence. Kim Kardashian's boobs could be real, too, and that's about as likely.

(T)he world is always changing. Always. We can't give the next generation a set of guarantees. Best we can do is help them be smart enough and tough enough to deal with whatever comes. You know as well as I do that we're not going to be there forever for them.

By the time I finished the first series, 'Marvel Universe vs. Punisher,' I knew that there was a lot more story to tell.

Value is relative," said the saint. "A man with his house on fire and a man dying of thirst each place a different value on a glass of water.

That's when I got the first real tingle of warning. Small, but serious. The smart thing to do would have been to simply end the call. No goodbyes, no polite refusals, just hit the button, put the cell phone in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet, and go to the multiplex to watch a movie about things blowing up. Maybe get some Ben and Jerry's afterward.

But it was death that changed. People are still people. Some good, some bad. Death changed, and we don't know what death really means anymore. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this is an object lesson about the arrogance of our assumptions. Hard to say. But the world? She didn't change. She healed. We stopped hurting her and she began to heal. You can see it all around. The whole world is a forest now. The air is fresher. More trees, more oxygen.

There are worse things that can happen to an enemy of the state than Gitmo. Hate to say it, hate it to be the truth, but there it is.

There are also several notes in your file suggesting that you are a world-class smartass." "Really? You mean I made it through the nationals?" "And you apparently think you're hilarious." "You're saying I'm not?

How the hell are you idiots allowed to run a country? I should have voted for a clown college. They'd at least have a reason for being this stupid.

Rage was sometimes a useful ally in the heat of a fight, but it was a trickster. It made everything seem possible.

Sometimes there are hurts so deep that they exist in a country that has no spoken language, a place where all landscapes are blighted and no sun ever shines.

Did the sudden dark remind you that all of the things we expect to be there for us, to protect us, shelter us, provide for us, are fleeting and finite?

If you battle monsters, you don't always become a monster. But you aren't entirely human anymore, either.

Sometimes there aren't words, Benny knew. Sometimes there are hurts so deep that they exist in a country that has no spoken language, a place where all landscapes are blighted and no sun ever shines. Benny had left his footprints in the dust of that place.

It was harder to let yourself sink if someone else needed you to be their rock.

When giant violent albino penguins are the least extraordinary issue of the day, then your day has slipped a gear.

How do you know that?"
"Because,"Chong said with raised eyebrows,"when you open those things called 'books',there are words as well as pictures.Sometimes the words tell you stuff.

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I got this," said Nix, raising her bokken.

That's stupid," said Benny.
"That's people," said the supervisor.

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The real world was never cool enough for anyone to accept a costumed supervillain. Which

But the colonel said and did nothing as the seconds splintered off the clock and fell like debris on the floor.

Lilah, there's not a living soul on this planet who shouldn't be afraid of Saint John.

This was a better place. Not just this new town, but this new world. So much brighter and cleaner than the old world of rot and ruin, fire and ash.