Dan Wells famous quotes

Happiness is the most natural thing in the world when you have it, and the slowest, strangest, most impossible thing when you don't. It's like learning a foreign language: You can think about the words all you want, but you'll never be able to speak it until you suck up your courage and say them out loud.
-- Dan Wells

#Thinking #World #Want

Facts are too busy being true to worry about how you feel about them.
-- Dan Wells

#Worry #How You Feel #Facts

I stared at her closely, studying her face, her eyes, everything. This was the angel that tamed a demon; the soul that trapped him and held him with a power he'd never felt before. Love.
-- Dan Wells

#Eye #Angel #Soul

If I'm going to spend the whole night waiting for you guys to stop flirting and shoot each other, I want to at least be entertained.
-- Dan Wells

#Flirting #Night #Guy

It's not enough, is it? Just to follow; just to have faith in someone bigger and smarter and better informed. That's how we're built, that's how every Partial is wired - to follow orders and trust in our leaders - but it's not enough. It never has been. We've followed our leaders, and sometimes they win and sometimes they lose; we do what they say and we play our part. But this is our decision. Our mission. And when we're done, it will be our victory, or our defeat. I don't want to fail, but if I do, I want to be able to look back and say, 'I did that. I failed. That was all me.
-- Dan Wells

#Winning #Order #Play

It's just one thing after another. Cars that won't run. Planes that will never fly again. Computer systems we can barely use, let alone re-create. It's like...time is flowing backward. We're caveman archeologists in the ruins of the future.
-- Dan Wells

#Running #Car #Use

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
-- Dan Wells

#Enemy

You make your own choices, Kira, and you can’t let anyone ever take that away from you.
-- Dan Wells

#Choices #Kira #Away From You

Freedom is a responsibility to be earned, not a license for recklessness and anarchy. If someday, despite our strongest efforts and our deepest determination, we finally fall, let it be because our enemies finally beat us, not because we beat ourselves.
-- Dan Wells

#Determination #Fall #Responsibility

It's not John who wants to cut his mother into tiny pieces, it's Mr. Monster. See? I feel better already.
-- Dan Wells

#Mother #Feel Better #Cutting

I guess all we have left are awesome dreams.
-- Dan Wells

#Dream

Here was something that I did all the time, and thought nothing of it, and it turns out the rest of the world thinks it's completely reprehensible. That's when I knew I needed to change, so I started making rules. The first one was; Don't mess with animals.
-- Dan Wells

#Thinking #Animal #Firsts

I'm going to cure RM." Marcus laughed. "I wondered when someone would finally get around to that. It's been on my to-do list for ages, but you know how things are: Life gets so busy, and saving the human race is such an inconvenience.
-- Dan Wells

#Race #Age #Saving

The most important thing you can ever know, is that whatever your purpose is, that's not your only choice.
-- Dan Wells

#Choices #Bravery #Important

I'd made a long list of exceptions to cover the area between "ignoring her completely" and "abducting her at knifepoint.
-- Dan Wells

#Long #Lists #Made

This book is dedicated to the rule breakers, the troublemakers, and the revolutionaries. Sometimes the hand that feeds you needs a good bite.
-- Dan Wells

#Book #Hands #Needs

The last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world.
-- Dan Wells

#Fall #World #Lasts

I wanted everything to stay the same, but you wanted things to be better, it's just...going to be a whole lot worse for awhile first. And I think I knew that, and I was scared of it." - Marcus
-- Dan Wells

#Thinking #Firsts #Scared

Jayden laughed grimly. 'Press the attack and hope for the best.' 'Hope is not a strategy,' said Kira 'It's not plan A,' said Jayden, 'and it shouldn't be plan B, but it is every plan C that has ever been made.
-- Dan Wells

#Kira #Strategy #Made

I'd rather know how you feel than hope and wonder and delude myself for weeks on end...
-- Dan Wells

#How You Feel #Wonder #Week

If other things must be destroyed in order for fire to exist, that's all right with fire. As far as fire is concerned, that's what those things are there for in the first place” Excerpt From: Wells, Dan. “I Am Not a Serial Killer.” Macmillan, 2010-03-30T07:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.
-- Dan Wells

#Fire #Order #Serial Killer

It's like . . . time is flowing backward. We're caveman archeologists in the ruins of the future.
-- Dan Wells

#Ruins

If you have the strength to whine, you have the strength to do something about it.
-- Dan Wells

Life is a lone wolf, scratching out a living with teeth and claws and a heart of stone.
-- Dan Wells

#Heart #Teeth #Stones

This is life...Not a peace treaty, not an idealistic dream, but a grim dance of death and survival. The strong live on while the weak--the ones too small or too foolish to fight back--die in agony and blood.
-- Dan Wells

#Dream #Strong #Fighting

If you want to survive in this world, you need to stop asking why people work together, and just start working together.
-- Dan Wells

#People #Working Together #Needs

Manhattan was a no-man's land, empty, an unofficial demilitarized zone between Partials and the human survivors. No one was supposed to be here, not because it was forbidden but because it was dangerous. If something happened to you out here, either side could get you, and neither side could protect you.
-- Dan Wells

#Men #Land #Survivor

If my life had no meaning there was no reason not to end it.
-- Dan Wells

#Reason #Ends

Embrace your complexity, stretch your creativity, and live up to your potential, you are what makes the world great.
-- Dan Wells

#Creativity #World #Embrace

Love is when you have the opportunity of turning someone's feelings or trust or vulnerability against them, but you don't. You make promises you don't want to keep, but you keep them because they're right; you help people who can't help you back. [...] Love is when you find something so great, sonecessary, that it becomes more important to you than your own goals, than your own life - not because your life has no meaning without it, but because it gives your life a meaning it never had before.
-- Dan Wells

#Opportunity #Love Is #People

I cursed him then, not because his tears were fake, but because they were real. I cursed him for showing me, with every tear and every smile and every sincere emotion he had, that I was the real freak.
-- Dan Wells

#Real #Fake #Tears

I didn't know how to explain what I meant; sociopathy wasn't just being emotionally deaf, it was being emotionally mute, too. I felt like the characters on our muted TV, waving their hands and screaming and never saying a word out loud.
-- Dan Wells

#Character #Hands #Just Being

I'm a good person," I said, "because I know what good people are supposed to act like, and I copy them.
-- Dan Wells

#People #Good Person #Said

You don't get a life until you make one worth living.
-- Dan Wells

Humanity will destroy itself, body and soul, before it will learn a simple lesson.
-- Dan Wells

#Simple #Humanity #Soul

I've never been this wet in my life, " said Kira. "Even immersed in a bathtub I swear I was dryer than I am now. " "Look on the bright side, " said Marcus. Kira waited. "This is the point at which you would traditionally suggest a bright side. " "I've never been a real traditional guy," said Marcus. "Besides, I'm not saying I know a bright side, I just think this would be a great time to look at one.
-- Dan Wells

#Real #Thinking #Guy

If you can't know the truth, said Isolde, live the most awesome lie you can think off.
-- Dan Wells

#Lying #Thinking #Said

I'd like to think humans have a stronger sense of justice than the random forces of nature do.
-- Dan Wells

#Thinking #Justice #Stronger

It's a pretty big shock to realise that the only people you can identify with are psychopathic killers.
-- Dan Wells

#People #Killers #Shock

I'm not scared anymore, I just ... I don't know. I think it's because I saw someone else, someone behind your face, like you'd taken off a mask. It was still you, but it wasn't. And I don't think that person is going to hurt me, or Marci, or anybody else, but ... I guess the thing is that I don't know anything about that person. At all. And that's what scares me more than anything - that there could be two people, so different, and one of them so secret.
-- Dan Wells

#Hurt #Taken #Thinking

Humans aren't defined by death, and they're not defined by what they lack. They're defined by their connections.
-- Dan Wells

#Connections #Humans

Feelings aren't good or bad. They're just weak or strong. Love, for example, is weak: someone loves you, you love them back, you're happy for a while, and then it fades away. But if one of those lovers betrays the other, then you have a real emotion - then you have something powerful, something that leaves a mark you'll never be rid of. Betrayal is the most delicious of all, but it takes a while to set it up, and fear can be just as intense if you know what you're doing.
-- Dan Wells

#Strong #Powerful #Betrayal

I love talking to people and hearing their stories. Everyone's got their own story to tell, and when you sit down with someone and really talk to them, you can learn so much.
-- Dan Wells

#Talking #People #Stories

Dead bodies are calm and silent—perfectly still, perfectly harmless. A corpse will never move, it will never laugh, and it will never judge. A corpse will never shout at you, hit you, or leave you. Far away from the zombies and junk that you see on TV, a corpse is actually the perfect friend. The perfect pet. I feel more comfortable with them than I do with real people.
-- Dan Wells

#Real #Moving #People

Love's not the point. We just do what we always do, and we get by.
-- Dan Wells

Fear is about things that you can't control. The future or the dark, or someone trying to kill you. You don't get scared of yourself because you always know what you're going to do.
-- Dan Wells

#Dark #Trying #Scared

Fear is a ... it's a weird thing, when you think about it. People are only afraid of other things, they're never afraid of themselves.
-- Dan Wells

#Thinking #People #Weird Things

The monster behind the wall stirred. I'd come to think of it as a monster, but it was just me. Or the darker part of me, at least. You probably think it would be creepy to have a real monster hiding inside of you, but trust me - it's far, far worse when the monster is really just your own mind. Calling it a monster seemed to distance it a little, which made me feel better about it. Not much better, but I take what I can get.
-- Dan Wells

#Wall #Distance #Real

Hello, Bradley,' said Mom. She'd regained her composure after my outburst, and now raised her camera. 'Stand close.' 'No, Mom,' I said. 'No pictures.' 'But you're friend's here now,' she said, waving us together. 'Smile!' 'I don't need a picture with-' the flash snapped '-another guy. That's great, Mom, thank you. Send that one to Dad and tell him we're going steady.
-- Dan Wells

#Mom #Dad #Guy

I'm the demonslayer. Come and get me.
-- Dan Wells

APD is primarily defined as a lack of empathy,' I said. I'd looked it up too, a few months ago. Empathy is what allows people to interpret emotion, the same way ears interpret sounds; without it you become emotionally deaf. 'It means I don't connect emotionally with other people. I wondered if he was going to pick that one.' 'How do you even know that?' she said. 'You're fifteen years old, for goodness' sake. You should be ... I don't know, chasing girls or playing video games.' 'You're telling a sociopath to chase girls?
-- Dan Wells

#Girl #Mean #Games

It doesn't matter how many they kill," I told him. "And it's not awesome-it's wrong." "Then why do you talk about them all the time?" asked Max. "Because wrong is interesting.
-- Dan Wells

#Interesting #Max #Matter

Life is too short. It's too precious. We have to live in this world, but we don't have to wallow in it. We don't have to fill our lives with all of this darkness.
-- Dan Wells

#Life Is Too Short #Darkness #World

Life comes from death, and weakness teaches us strength.
-- Dan Wells

#Weakness #Teach

Happiness is the most natural thing in the world when you have it, and the slowest, strangest, most impossible thing when you don't.
-- Dan Wells

#World #Impossible #Natural

Sometimes the hand that feeds you needs a good bite.
-- Dan Wells

#Hands #Needs #Sometimes

Each life has a different purpose, and some people can find their purpose more easily than others. The key, the most important thing you can ever know, is that whatever your purpose is, that's not your only choice" "No matter why you're here, no matter why any of us are here, you're never tied down to fate. You're never locked in. You make your own choices, Kira, and you can't let anyone ever take that away from you.
-- Dan Wells

#Fate #Keys #People

There are some things more important than ourselves - more important than the limits of the present, and the whims of the now. There is a future to build and protect. And if we're going to make that future as reality, we have to stop fighting among ourselves. We have to end dissent whenever we find it. We have to trust one another again.
-- Dan Wells

#Fighting #Reality #Important

Ready...set-y...spaghetti!
-- Dan Wells

#Spaghetti #Ready

Well, thanks for not shooting anyone, I guess", said Marcus. "My contribution was to somehow refrain from peeing myself. You can thank me later.
-- Dan Wells

#Shooting #Thanks #Refrain

I am stronger than my trials.
-- Dan Wells

#Stronger #Trials

I need a sample of your blood,' said Kira. Marcus raised an eyebrow. 'I didn't know we'd reached that stage of our relationship.
-- Dan Wells

#Blood #Eyebrows #Needs

Hockey,' mused Marcus. 'The sport of kings.
-- Dan Wells

#Sports #Kings #Hockey

Mother of mercy,"said Tovar."And that caused the riot?" "It's the other way around,"said Kira sheepishly."We started the riot as a distraction for the jaibreak." Tovar whistled."You don't mess aroud." P303
-- Dan Wells

#Mother #Kira #Way

I can't imagine you not saying a word," said Marcus."I think you'd go crazy first.
-- Dan Wells

#Crazy #Thinking #Firsts

It's good to see you," Said Haru. "You can see me?" asked Marcus, patting himself in sudden shock."The potion must have worn off! That's the last time I give my lunch to a talking squirrel". P12
-- Dan Wells

#Squirrels #Talking #Lunch

I simply felt alone, one leaf sitting miles away from a giant, communal pile.
-- Dan Wells

#Giants #Sitting #Miles

I didn’t study medicine to watch people die." -Kira
-- Dan Wells

#Medicine #People #Watches

When our ancestors were attacked at Pearl Harbor, they called it a day that would live in infamy. The day the Partials attacked us with the RM Virus will not live in anything, because there will be none of us left to remember it." -President David R. Cregan, March 21, 2065, in a press conference at the White House. Three hours later he hanged himself.
-- Dan Wells

#White #House #President

When she fell asleep, she dreamed of death-- not just for her, not just for her species, but for every living thing she had ever known. The earth was flat and brown, a field of dirt as barren as the moon, a single road stretching in the distance. the last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. Then they disappeared, and there was nothing left but nothing.
-- Dan Wells

#Distance #Fall #Moon

My wit is like your legs," said Xochi. " It would be selfish of me to keep it hidden.
-- Dan Wells

#Selfish #Would Be #Legs