Michael Grant Quotes

Welcome to Perdido beach, where our motto is: Radiation, what radiation?

— Michael Grant

“What do you think that fish is?' Sam asked Astrid.
She peered closely at the alleged fish. 'I think that's an example of Pesce inedibilis,' she said.
'Yeah?' Sam made a face. 'Do you think it's okay to eat?'
Astrid sighed theatrically. 'Pesce inedibilis? Inedible? Joke, duh. Try to keep up, Sam, I made that really easy for you.'
Sam smiled. 'You know, a real genius would have known I wouldn't get it. Ergo, you are not a real genius. Hah. That's right. I threw down an 'ergo.'
She gave him a pitying look. 'That's very impressive, Sam. Especially from a boy who has twenty-two different uses for the word 'dude.”

— Michael Grant

“No you sick, stupid creep, I love you. I shouldn't. I shouldn't. You're sick inside, Caine, sick! But I love you.
- Diana”

— Michael Grant

“No, no, no, so not getting the point of fear. Because fear wasn't about what made sense. Fear was about possibilities. Not things that happened. Things that might.”

— Michael Grant

I know something must be very wrong, or just possibly very right?

— Michael Grant

“The fool says 'I never intended to kill. I meant only to wound.' But I tell you that if you prick a finger with a poisoned thorn you may not claim innocence when the heart dies. Do not plant a weed and pretend surprise when it grows to strangle your garden. For, I tell you that hate is to kill, for from hatred grows death as surely as life grows from love. Therefore do not nurture hatred, but love, even for those who hate you in return. Hatred wins many battles, and yet love will triumph.”

— Michael Grant

“Sadie was like that, one of those people untouched by trend or fashion, comfortable building her own world out of what she liked, from tunes and styles and reads that could be so ancient they were cobwebbed, up through to things so new they barley existed yet.”

— Michael Grant

“I'd noticed it because it was so weirdly out of place, a defiant crimson McIntosh in an army of dull green Granny Smiths.”

— Michael Grant

“Forgive. Forgive him and forgive yourself. And come back to the land of the living.”

— Michael Grant

“We take the names of madmen, because madness is our fate. Terribly melodramatic, that.”

— Michael Grant

“I had a hard childhood. Hard for my parents. Not that bad for me.”

— Michael Grant

“Say it. But ... "
"But what?" he asked.
She whispered it, sounding too vulnerable. "But only if its the truth, Caine. Only. If."
"I love you," he said.”

— Michael Grant

“He wanted to go running home to Mommy, what can I say? Of course, it's hard for me to believe that anyone would choose to step out of the FAYZ. I mean, where else do you get to eat rats, use your backyard for a toilet, and live in fear for nineteen different kinds of scary? -Howard”

— Michael Grant

“We're sitting in the dark willing to sell our souls for another peppermint with enough uranium to give a terrorist a wet dream. - Diana”

— Michael Grant

“Come live with us, Diana. Don't argue. Just say yes."
Diana looked at the ground to hide her emotions. Then she said, "Would I have to be hearing you two going at it night and day?”

— Michael Grant

“So asking you to take a moonlit walk with me, that would totally not work?"
"What?" Again that glare. "Go away. Stop being an idiot. I don't even know you."
"You're healing my little brother Bowie."
"Yeah, that doesn't make us friends, kid."
"So no moonlight."
"Are you retarded?"
"Sunrise? I could get up early."
"Go away."
"Sunset tomorrow?" -Sanjit & Lana”

— Michael Grant

“It's over, Sam. Finally."
"Yeah," he said. "I guess it is."
"Turn out the light, Sam."
Sam reached for the switch and turned out the light.”

— Michael Grant

Too bad we don't have marshmallows. This is an amazing fire. Howard emerged through the smoke behind Edilio.

— Michael Grant

“You don't look so much like a great hero,' Jarrah said. 'I'm pretty sure I'm not,' Mack said wearily. 'My throat is hoarse from screaming in terror. I don't think heroes have that problem.”

— Michael Grant

I'm sorry for hurting you. I know I did. I'm most likely dead now, and I guess if there's any kind of fairness in the afterlife I'm probably in hell getting roasted. But if that's where I am, I want you to know, I still love you. Always did. Love, Caine

— Michael Grant

“An old couple came running from a motorhome, scribbling as they ran. Their sign read, Can you check on our cat, Ariel?
No one would answer that, because the cats had all been eaten.”

— Michael Grant

To almost no one's surprise, Astrid said, "Dune, by Frank Herbert. 'I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the Fear has gone there will be nothing.'"
She and Lana together spoke the last phrase of the incantation. "'Only I will remain.

— Michael Grant

“Caine raised the debris off himself.
The bugs were all gone. He saw the tail of one as it raced away.
If he went after them, he'd probably get killed.
But stay here and do what? Be safe? He'd have been safe on the island. He hadn't come back to be safe.
Two possible outcomes: the bugs killed everyone and then who would Caine rule over? Or the bugs were defeated by someone else. And then how would he ever get control? Power would go to whoever won this fight.
Still Caine hesitated. A big, warm bed. A beautiful girl to share it with. Food. Water. Everything he needed, just a few miles away on the island. The logical, rational answer was obvious.
"Which is why the world stays messed up," Caine said under his breath. "People aren't rational."
He took a few deep, steadying breaths, and prepared to die for power. (p435)”

— Michael Grant

“She collapsed at the bottom of the trail, at the edge of the ghost town. Dekka sat on Edilio and pressed down on the wound. The force of the blood was weaker now. She could almost hold the blood back now, not a good thing, no, because it meant he was almost finished, his brave heart almost done beating.
Dekka looked up straight into the glittering eyes of a coyote. She could sense the others around her, closing in. Wary but sensing that a fresh meal was close at hand.”

— Michael Grant

“Sometimes, if I really strain my brain, I can do multiplication.”

— Michael Grant

“The pain was her whole world now. Pain and fear.”

— Michael Grant

“Things will be different this time," Caine said. "There was too much contention, too much violence the last time. I tried to be a peaceful leader. But thing went badly."
"I wonder why," Diana muttered.
"These people," Caine said grandly, sweeping his arm towards the town, "need more than a leader. They need ... a king.”

— Michael Grant

“Slice and Dice, Slice and Dice”

— Michael Grant

“Dont hurt me,'Caine whispered. He didnt have the will to look up at her.
Gaia laughed. Have you seen Mother? I seem to have lost her.”

— Michael Grant

I have good shoulders, might as well reveal them. I know she's checking me out. Fair enough, because I'm checking her out.
"Ah ahh ahhhh!"
Eve cries out suddenly. She's in pain. Bad pain. so it's possible she's not really checking me out.

— Michael Grant

They both smiled at the picture of Albert in his chinos and button-down shirt exhorting kids from atop a bike.

— Michael Grant

“It was a sphincter at the top of a black bowl. A fitting commentary on the FAYZ, Diana thought. A giant sphincter.”

— Michael Grant

“We could do muscles first, then brains,: Aislin suggests.
"It's not all genetic, you know: he would have to work out."
"Make him right and I'll work him out," she says with a trace of her confident leer.
"Without a brain?"
She sighs. "They're better off without one.”

— Michael Grant

“He's here and real and beautiful and I made him beautiful. And this is why Solo would destroy my mother? Is this boy, this man, is his existence really some kind of a crime?
In what mad, unholy universe could this work of art - my work of art - be a crime?”

— Michael Grant

“You can't do anything else with people like this. You have to kill them all. Zil. Caine. Drake. You just have to kill them”

— Michael Grant

I realized, when I saw the forest burning, how fascinating the firelight is. It's beautiful, and people stare at it, don't they? It destroys things and kills people, but humans love it. Is it because they crave their own destruction, Sam? I want to understand your kind. I am going out into the wider world, and I must learn. But first things first. First, to escape this shell, this egg in which I have gestated, all eyes will be on the fire, all eyes blinded by the smoke, and when I walk out of here, out into your large world with its billions, no one will even see. It's the beauty of light, don't you see, Sam? It reveals, but it also distracts and blinds. It's even better than darkness.

— Michael Grant

“Listen, sweetheart. Don't be a hero. [ ... ] If they actually go through with this hare-brained notion and send you into the fighting, there will come a time when you'll have a choice between staying in your trench and crawling out of it to save a buddy. Or maybe you'll have had enough of getting shelled and decide you just have to run out there and shoot someone. That's what I mean. When that moment comes, you stay down. You keep your head down. You hug the ground.”

— Michael Grant

Of course, some people, when they're nervous or afraid, turn pedantic. And if you don't know what pedantic means, here's a clue: in the dictionary, I'm the illustration they use.

— Michael Grant

“Eriskigal, or as some say it, Erishkigal, is Morgan le Fay, Kali, Persephone, and Hel.'
'She's Hel all right,' Jarrah muttered.”

— Michael Grant

You did what you had to do. You're a hero, Vicky said.

— Michael Grant

Sometimes the worst thing is the fear.

— Michael Grant

“Fear could be dangerous. Fear could get people hurt. And there was nothing but fear running crazy”

— Michael Grant

“Both sides, parents and children, now saw the huge gulf that had opened between them”

— Michael Grant

The clips hurt. The presence of a chainsaw was terrifying. And Noah did not want to hear about insane Nazi poets.

— Michael Grant

“A white van drove slowly-as slowly as only an inexperienced and frightened driver could go
down San Pablo Avenue. It came to a stop at a distance, and Caine found himself hoping it was
trouble. Trouble he could handle. A fight would be a wonderful relief from the tedium.”

— Michael Grant

“The only thing to do was read. Hermit Jim had exactly thirty-eight books. She had inventoried them. There were fairly recent novels by Patrick O'Brian, Dan Simmons, Stephen King, and Dennis Lehane, and some books that she supposed were philosophy by writers like Thoreau. There were classics whose names seemed familiar to her: Oliver Twist, The Sea Wolf, The Big Sleep, Ivanhoe.”

— Michael Grant

“It took Caine a few beats to get it. "No. Go kill yourself. Eat your own gun. No. No no no."
"You're happy here counting fish and nagging kids to work?" Edilio asked.
"He's not," Virtue said, beating Toto to the punch and earning an annoyed glance from Caine.
"He's only done it for two days since the battle, and he's already bored.”

— Michael Grant

“He fell like a marionette with the strings cut. Now!”

— Michael Grant

Aislin is a-" "-drunken slut.

— Michael Grant

“Oh, Snap," I say. "What?" "Sorry. I was flashing back to 2005.”

— Michael Grant