Dust & Decay Quotes

“No matter what choice you make, it doesn't define you. Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later; just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we make lasts our whole life. If there's ever a choice you've made that you no longer agree with, you can make another choice.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Sometimes people say terrible things when they're scared. They don't mean to, but they can't help it. They lash out because if they can see that their words hurt someone else, it makes them feel as if they aren't completely powerless.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“We're each alone inside our heads, some more so than others.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“It's important to know the past, but your survival depends on knowing the present.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“It’s easier to be a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Generosity could be as contagious as the zombie plague as long as enough people were willing to be carriers.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Guilt and rage, hatred and fear were pathways to weakness and clumsy choices.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“I've managed to stay alive out here in the Ruin because I'm a realist. I allow the truth to be the truth, no matter how much I might want it to be something else.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Rage was sometimes a useful ally in the heat of a fight, but it was a trickster. It made everything seem possible.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Courage is tricky, oily. Easy to drop, easy to misplace."
"I thought that if you had courage you always had it.". . .
"Lilah, nothing is always there. Not courage, not joy, not hate or hope or anything else. We find courage, lose it, sometimes misplace it for years, and sometimes live in its grace for a while.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Nix still held Benny's hand, and her grip tightened to an almost crushing force, grinding his hand bones together. It hurt, but Benny would rather have cut that hand off than take it back at that moment. If it would help Nix through this, he'd give her a pair of pliers and a vise so she could do a proper job.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Basher shook his head. "No, we climbed in through a ground-floor guest bedroom all ninja-like. Snuck up the back stairs."
"Then you might be the cavalry," said Tom, "but I'm Santa Claus. Let's go downstairs and open some presents.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“...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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“So is that it? Will I have to live the rest of my life like this? Not doing the right thing? Not saying the right words?"
"That's your choice. You can't change the past. Ah, but the future. . .you own the future." The Greenman smiled. "So, you tell me. . .what choice do you want to make now?”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“A bite will still hurt, but it won't kill you.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“Leaving is never easy,” said Tom. “Even when you know you have to go.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“She gathered the cat up in her arms and held it to her chest as if it was the most precious thing in the world.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“We've all had our moments of weakness and failure. All of us. We've all suffered through dark nights of the soul.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“(N)othing is always there. Not courage, not joy, not hate or hope or anything else. We find courage, lose it, sometimes misplace it for years, and sometimes live in its grace for a while.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“(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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“the 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.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay

“No one is really who people think they are. It's unfair. When they give us nicknames and create a story for us, everyone expects us to be that person and to live up to that legend.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Dust & Decay