Richard Kadrey Quotes

This is beautiful." "If you're Ronald Reagan, I guess." "The idea of it, I mean. The beauty hidden within the rot." "Sure. That's what I meant, too." I ~ Richard Kadrey

When you're facing down multiple attackers, you always want to make the first move. It lets them know that you're ready to fight and that you're crazy enough to get the party started. One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn't know when it's winning. And crazy doesn't know when to stop. If you can't pull off crazy, if, for instance, you're handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy. ~ Richard Kadrey

Chasing a burning girl down a city street is a lot harder than it sounds. Civilians tend to stop and stare and this turns them into human bowling pins. Slow whiny bowling pins. ~ Richard Kadrey

Oh God, look what you did."
"God's away on business, Kas. Talk to me. ~ Richard Kadrey

No one says anything. We've hit into one of those weird silences that happen when someone drops something too real into the middle of a conversation that should just have been about drinking and patting ourselves on the back. ~ Richard Kadrey

That's how you know someone likes you. Anyone can give you chocolate and flowers, but when they'll disembowel someone for you? That's true love. ~ Richard Kadrey

Now you are thinking like a thief. Fewer guns and more exits. We'll cure your cowboy ways yet. (Vidocq) ~ Richard Kadrey

Death, like birth, is a secret of nature." Only with birth you get a blanket and a bottle. You get a blanket with death too, but they call it a shroud and everyone else gets the bottle. ~ Richard Kadrey

Maybe I need to shake their faith a little." Sola puts the spoon back into the yogurt. "How?" "A good, long nose pick might be a good start. Really dig for the mother lode." Vidocq laughs a little. "Wait until I have gone home before you implement that strategy, please." I look at Sola. "How come you're not all dazzled by my Heavenly awesomeness? ~ Richard Kadrey

A man of many thoughts but few words. Lucky for us all that it's not the other way around. Vidocq ~ Richard Kadrey

This is new. I never heard of Hellions vivisecting their own. They do it to some of the more heinous dead souls in the House of Knives, but not to each other. Whatever ~ Richard Kadrey

The things we do to stay alive for another year. Another day. Another hour. The deals we make with the universe and ourselves. You start to feel dirty. ~ Richard Kadrey

Fortunately, I'm good at ignoring a lot of what my brain does. ~ Richard Kadrey

Shit," Jonny mumbled as he stepped on something soft and clinging in the doorway of the abandoned hotel. Then "Shit" again as he recognized the accuracy of his curse. ~ Richard Kadrey

The dead think they can get away with anything because you'll feel sorry for them. If you play cards with the dead, make sure you deal and don't let them buy you drinks. They'll slip you a formaldehyde roofie and pry the gold fillings out of your teeth. ~ Richard Kadrey

It's more like how some people can't help but bring out the not necessarily righteous parts of your personality. Like how you meet someone and instantly know they're a full-time professional victim, and no matter how hard you try, something takes over and you can't help needling them. ~ Richard Kadrey

I don't want to run for anything. I want to shove this miserable cheap-ass check so far up Wells's ass he can read the routing number out the back of his eyes. ~ Richard Kadrey

Mammon finally sees me as I step out from behind his floating map of the universe. The room is empty except for us. Mammon's dead officers have all winked out of existence and are on their way to Tartarus, the Hell below Hell. I ~ Richard Kadrey

When you're born in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire. But it's not. ~ Richard Kadrey

Maybe she'll be one of the lucky ones who gets to see it from a distance and makes it home in one piece. Maybe I'll be ripping out her spine tomorrow. I hope she makes it home first. It would suck to be killed and reanimated while wearing corporate antennae. Though, it wouldn't be as bad as reanimating dressed like a crab or a taco because you were pimping a new restaurant when you died. There's a difference between a bad death and the universe stopping by to take a great big shit on you. I ~ Richard Kadrey

All these scars. The road map of my life. My armor. ~ Richard Kadrey

On mobile phones: "It looks like a TV remote fucked a little typewriter and this is the bastard offspring ~ Richard Kadrey

He shrugs. We were young back then and swept up in the excitement that we could throw out the old ways and rebuild the world. I'm older now and understand. Our plans weren't thorough enough back then. This time they are. ~ Richard Kadrey

Whiskey doesn't mix well with toothpaste, but I already filled the glass, and once whiskey's been let loose you have to deal with it, like love or a rabid dog. ~ Richard Kadrey

Another scar or two won't ruin my pretty face."
"Right."
"Carlos, are you being polite? That's not why I came here for. I know I'm not Steve McQueen."
"My lady is totally in love with him. Lucky for me he's dead or I'd be in trouble."
I hold up my glas of Jack Daniel's in a toast. "Here's to all the guys better looking than us. May they all die first. ~ Richard Kadrey

When the world began, there were no such things as monsters. Demons were just fallen angels who, booted out of Heaven and bored with Hell, wandered the Earth sticking little girls' pigtails in inkwells and sinking the occasional continent. ~ Richard Kadrey

I'm trying very hard not to think about anything I'm doing. Of all the iffy things I've ever done in my life, I've never had to ditch a body before. While it's giving me a migraine right now, I think the fact that I'm not an expert on corpse disposal says a lot of good things about me and my life choices. ~ Richard Kadrey

That's for me, isn't it? I'm going to Hell."
"Don't feel so bad. It beats Fresno. ~ Richard Kadrey

The building has shielded generators. The power will be back on in the next three minutes. We need to move. Through ~ Richard Kadrey

The whole Mangarm crew is gaunt but the woman looks like a mummy with a hangover. But she's alive. I can hear her heart and smell her sweat, which isn't all that pleasant. She ~ Richard Kadrey

Playing with the Barbie-size keyboard on my new phone. Phones are like toys now. They fit in your pocket, light up and vibrate like joy buzzers. Plus, you can get-I mean, "access"-the Internet and find anything you want. Music. Maps. Porn. Anything. If cell phones came with a cigarette dispenser, they'd be the greatest stupid invention ever. ~ Richard Kadrey

Thank God for whiskey or the world would be so full of secrets the weight would spin us into the sun. ~ Richard Kadrey

The clerk is looking at me. His expression hasn't changed. What I want to do is punch a hole in the front of the desk, reach through, grab his balls, and make him sing The Mickey Mouse Club song. But these days, I'm working on the theory that killing everyone I don't like might be counterproductive. I'm learning to use my indoor voice like a big boy, so I smile back at the clerk. ~ Richard Kadrey

Young man, there are some things in the world so profane that their only real value is in not knowing about them. ~ Richard Kadrey

Fuck me. I'm a rock star. And all I really wanted was a burrito. ~ Richard Kadrey

L.A. is what happens when a bunch of Lovecraftian elder gods and porn starlets spend a weekend locked up in the Chateau Marmont snorting lines of crank off Jim Morrison's bones. ~ Richard Kadrey

What the fuck are you two talking about? Why are all dreams and prophecies so goddamn obscure?" "Because, dumb-ass, if any one of them flat-out told you what was coming, you'd try to stop it or change it. Some things you can't stop. You just have to go through them. At least with a clue, you'll be able to recognize it when it gets there. ~ Richard Kadrey

I'm not a huge fan of other people's logic. ~ Richard Kadrey

The room is a wreck. It looks like it was worked over by Linda Blair on a crack binge. ~ Richard Kadrey

If Jesus was a bartender, He would still only be half as cool as Carlos. ~ Richard Kadrey

When it's true love you know why you're getting stabbed. ~ Richard Kadrey

Is there something else you have to say? Something you're not telling me?" "Yes. Up your game, Stark. These might be the End Times. I don't want you half-assing your way through them." It's a good party-line statement, but it's not what he's thinking about. There's something else. ~ Richard Kadrey

You don't have to be afraid of me. Eugene likes you. Doc likes you. That means I like you. We're all family now. All the funny little people who live in the cracks of the world. ~ Richard Kadrey

Don't talk. Kill it.
That might be the sweetest thing a woman's ever said to me on a first date. ~ Richard Kadrey

Besides, do you think you would have come if I'd just popped into your tattoo shop one night around closing and
said, 'Hello, I'm the Prince of Darkness. Think you could help me out
with a little war next Tuesday, say, sixish? ~ Richard Kadrey

The place looks like where David Lynch would meet Beaver Cleaver's mom for secret afternoons of bondage and milkshakes. ~ Richard Kadrey

Then why don't you know about the dead men who wandered into Bamboo House of Dolls for human sushi?" "Never. I'd have heard and we'd be on alert." "I guess omnipotence isn't what it used to be. But I can fix that for you. I've already killed three Drifters. Give me a contract and I'll get the rest. There's probably a lot of them, so I ought to get time and a half on this one." Wells scowls. He looks around like he's expecting someone. "If ~ Richard Kadrey

Sometimes just seeing a woman smile is like a knife in the heart. It hurts and it rattles your whole system, but against all your instincts you swallow the pain and keep looking. After a while you realize it doesn't hurt as much as you thought it would. ~ Richard Kadrey

She's plenty pissed at me. Not as pissed as Rinko but pissed. I can't blame her. I promised her three days and gave her a hundred. This is going to take a time to pass. If it ever does, now that she's moved on to someone else. Still, she went to the hotel with me last night. Was that a welcome home or a good-bye fuck? I guess I'll find out. I'm so fucking good at being patient. I ~ Richard Kadrey

A gun is like love. The universal language. ~ Richard Kadrey

Beautiful. Now I have to burrow like a groundhog into Mason's basement to the same room where he summoned those things to take me Downtown. Nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan. ~ Richard Kadrey

I got dragged to Hell by demons from the dawn of time. While I was down there, I killed monsters and became a hit man for the devil's friends. How have you been?" The guy's smile curdles. He takes a step back. "Don't let me catch you hanging around the halls anymore, okay? I'll have to call the manager." "No problem, Brenda. You have an extra cigarette?" "My name's Phil." "You have an extra cigarette, Chet?" He walks away and gets a good twenty feet before he mumbles "Fuck you," sure I can't hear him. ~ Richard Kadrey

When you live with a dead man's head that won't shut up and smokes all your cigarettes, the only way to deal with the awfulness is to make it so unbelievably awful that it becomes kind of weirdly beautiful. Like an exploding giraffe full of fireworks. ~ Richard Kadrey

If you ever need to confirm that a girl is worth coming back from Hell for, show her your monster arm and see what she says. ~ Richard Kadrey

This is where you first failed us. You gave us minds and told us not to think. You gave us curiosity and put a booby-trapped tree right in front of us. You gave us sex and told us not to do it. You played three-card monte with our souls from day one, and when we couldn't find the queen, you sent us to Hell to be tortured for eternity. That was your great plan for humanity? All you gave us here was daisies and fairy tales and you acted like that was enough. How were we supposed to resist evil when you didn't even tell us about it? ~ Richard Kadrey

That sounds like the sin of pride, Marshal. Better run downstairs and let Miss December flog it out of you. Webcam it and charge by the minute. You won't ever have to take government money again. ~ Richard Kadrey

...Reality is a two-ton weight strapped to your balls. And they just keep getting heavier. ~ Richard Kadrey

Maybe that's why Heaven is silent and God doesn't speak to man anymore. Heavenly intervention would blow the point spread. ~ Richard Kadrey

Let me finish my beer." (Stark)
"Of course. The end of the world can wait.(Kasabian) ~ Richard Kadrey

Maybe home isn't the place you love, just the place you know best. ~ Richard Kadrey

Hell didn't make me a monster. It just confirmed all my worst fears about myself. ~ Richard Kadrey

Don't drink too much."
"When I can spell out your name in shot glasses, I'll stop."
"I'll have to get a shorter name."
"I'll have to forget how to spell it. ~ Richard Kadrey

The thing you have to understand about Lucifer is that he hardly ever talks, and when he does, it's never much more than a whisper. When half the universe is hanging on to your every word, you don't have to shout. ~ Richard Kadrey

Yes, there are vampires. Try to keep up. ~ Richard Kadrey

As sweet as it feels, I can't lie here forever curled up in a big ball of fuck-the-world. ~ Richard Kadrey

Getting tossed in a meat grinder every now and then is part of what I do. I came back to earth to kill things, so I have to expect things to fight back occasionally. ~ Richard Kadrey

Vidocq and Allegra are holding hands on the small bed. I don't need to listen to their hearts or breathing. They're radiating tension like a microwave oven. Kasabian has gone back to his computer, trying to ignore all of this. Traven looks a little lost. Candy's not much better. I ~ Richard Kadrey

It's not necessary to fill every moment with your own voice. Silence terrifies you. You see your own existence as so tenuous that you're afraid you'll pop like a bubble if, at every opportunity, you don't remind the world that you're alive. But wisdom begins in silence. In learning to listen. To words and to the world. Trust me. You won't disappear. And, in time, you might find that you've grown into something unexpected." "What? ~ Richard Kadrey

There are two Venices I know about and one of them is a hotel in Vegas. The other is an L.A. beach where pretty girls walk their dogs while wearing as little as possible and mutant slabs of tanned, posthuman beef sip iced steroid lattes and pump iron until their pecs are the size of Volkswagens. ~ Richard Kadrey

It's more than coping. It's adaptation. ~ Richard Kadrey

Nothing nice happens to murdered women. ~ Richard Kadrey

In this life, no matter what anyone promises you, what allegiances of love or fealty they swear or what gods they pray to, you will never have more than what you have at this moment. ~ Richard Kadrey

Don't fuck with me, ball sac, ~ Richard Kadrey

None of the palaces in Hell come close to Lucifer's in size or beauty. Lucifer lives at the top of a literal ivory tower, miles high. You can't even see the top from the ground. The joke is that he built it that high so he can lean out the window and pound on Heaven's floor with a broom handle when he wants them to turn down the choir. ~ Richard Kadrey

Maybe you could take us to meet them," says Delon. She raises her eyebrows. "When I called you a fool earlier, I meant it figuratively. Now you're making me think I might have a been a bit too generous." "But you know how to contact them." "Why would I do that?" Delon ~ Richard Kadrey

How do you explain to someone that you understand their fear, then convince them that it's going to be all right? In my experience, the more you talk about what scares them, the worse it gets. There's not much to do but ride out the fear with them and try to keep them away from liquor and razor blades. ~ Richard Kadrey

Being able to embrace contradictions is a sign of intelligence.
Or insanity. ~ Richard Kadrey

You're God?" he says. "A piece of the pie, yes. You look disappointed. Turn that around, multiply it by a million, and you'll know how I feel about you people. ~ Richard Kadrey

We must always look after our friends, even when they are foolish. Especially when they are foolish. ~ Richard Kadrey

Oh Christ. Put me back with the zombies, Strawberry Shortcake. [p. 411] ~ Richard Kadrey

I guarantee you I'm not going to forget your voice. We're going to run into each other down the road sometime, and when we do I'm going to pop you apart one rivet at a time."
"There's the monster. Hello, monster. ~ Richard Kadrey

She looks like a librarian with some money and good taste in clothes, but underneath the Versace, she's Godzilla with tits. ~ Richard Kadrey

I'll give you another example. The snake in the Garden of Eden?"
"Yeah?"
"It was just a snake. Humanity's first real decision was to defy God. So was mine. That's the reason I make you uncomfortable. We're so much alike. ~ Richard Kadrey

When I was Downtown, I learned a lot about making threats. Make them big. Make them outrageous. You're never going to kick someone's ass. You're going to pull out their tongue and pour liquid nitrogen down their throat, chip out their guts with an ice pick, slide in a pane of glass, and turn them into an aquarium. ~ Richard Kadrey

If his drunkenness had legs, it would be Alexander the Great and conquer the known world. Then it would puke for a week into a solid gold toilet it stole from Zeus's guest room. ~ Richard Kadrey

If you're in the exorcism business, you must know a lot about demons." "Qliphoth," he says. "What?" "It's the proper word for what you call a demon. A demon is a bogeyman, an irrational entity representing fear in the collective unconscious. The Qliphoth are the castoffs of a greater entity. The old gods. They're dumb and their lack of intelligence makes them pure evil." "Okay, Daniel Webster. What happened at the exorcism?" Traven takes a breath and stares at his hands for a minute. "You should know that I don't follow the Church's standard exorcism rites. For instance, I seldom speak Latin. If Qliphoth really are lost fragments of the Angra Om Ya, the older dark gods, they're part of creatures millions of years old. Why would Latin have any effect on them? ~ Richard Kadrey

Calm down. Deep breaths. Go to your happy place. Oh, wait. I don't have one. ~ Richard Kadrey

I once considered learning to love iced coffee, but then I remembered I'd have to kill myself, so I gave up the idea. ~ Richard Kadrey

As each wave of technology is released. It must be accompanied by a demand for new skills, new language. Consumers must constantly update their ways of thinking, always questioning their understanding of the world. Going back to old ways, old technology is forbidden. There in no past, no present, only an endless future of inadequacy ~ Richard Kadrey

I seldom feel trapped by my world. Setting up rules and restrictions is part of the process. It gives your world shape. I always look at these things like haiku: you have to work within certain parameters, but within them, you're completely free. ~ Richard Kadrey

Malefic baneberry. It doesn't taste good, but one teaspoon and a skeleton would dance a jig. He ~ Richard Kadrey

You can take the boy out of the Devil but not the Devil out of the boy ~ Richard Kadrey

I tap a Malediction out of the box, fire it up, and puff. It tastes like a tire fire in a candy factory next door to a strip club. The best cigarettes ever. ~ Richard Kadrey

God is the great janitor of the universe. Why things don't work is that we have a janitor in charge, and we keep looking for the landlord. ~ Richard Kadrey

If I learned anything Downtown, it's this: the only real difference between an enemy and a friend is the day of the week. ~ Richard Kadrey

Thank you for that succinct description, but I prefer to go in with facts," says Julie. "Stark ~ Richard Kadrey

Imagine all of L.A. filled with windup men wandering empty-headed and waiting for orders and directions and purpose. That's L.A. in a nutshell. A city of driven creatures, but no one is a hundred percent sure what they're driven toward. Wealth. Fame. Power. Love. Revenge. These are all the obvious end points for the citizens of a spectral city, but none of them quite encompass a final goal. That's more fragile. Something that slips away like smoke the moment it's in your hands. It's a moonshine cocktail of desperation and desire, the certainty that you can find perfection through sheer willpower and the cold terror that if you do reach the goal it will have twisted into something new. A new fevered need born of the search for this one. Searching for the next goal will breed another. And on and on. L.A. and Kill City full of Pinocchios with whirring gears for brains, all wanting to be real boys but sunk in the certainty that they'll never become anything because they're nothing. They came from nothing and are headed for a further and harder nothing. ~ Richard Kadrey

I wish I could say, "No more Mr. Nice Guy," but the boat sailed on that one a long time ago. ~ Richard Kadrey

Enemies will kill you with a knife in the back. Friends will kill you with kindness. Either way you're dead. ~ Richard Kadrey

It doesn't matter if you and everyone else in the room are thinking it. You don't say the words. Words are weapons. They blast big bloody holes in the world. And words are bricks. Say something out loud and it starts turning solid. Say it loud enough and it becomes a wall you can't get through. ~ Richard Kadrey