Mira Grant Quotes

The difference between the truth and a lie is that both of them can hurt, but only one will take the time to heal you afterward.

My mother once told me that no woman is naked when she comes equipped with a bad mood and a steady glare.

Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-six years: with an idiot -- in this case, my brother, Shaun -- deciding it would be a good idea to go out and poke a zombie with a stick to see what happens.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. Rise up while you can.

I guess in the end, it doesn’t matter what we wanted. What matters is what we chose to do with the things we had.

I just find it interesting that kids apparently used to cry when Bambi's mother died. George and I both held our breaths, and then cheered when she didn't reanimate and try to eat her son.

Words have power.

Given a choice between life and death, choose life. Given a choice between right and wrong, choose what's right. And given a choice between a terrible truth and a beautiful lie, choose the truth every time.

Are you ever not a pessimist?" "Sometimes. But then I wake up.

You can't kill the truth.

Nothing is impossible to kill. It's just that sometimes after you kill something you have to keep shooting it until it stops moving

I feel the closest to crazy when I'm disagreeing with the voice in my head

I’m also fascinated by the difference between terror and fear. Fear says, “Do not actually put your hand in the alligator,” while terror says, “Avoid Florida entirely because alligators exist.

I am, in fact, immortal when annoyed.

The one thing I have absolute faith in is mankind's capacity to make things worse. No matter how bad it gets, we're all happy to screw each other over. It's enough to make me wonder if we should have let the zombies win.

And then everything was in the hands of gravity, which has never had much love for the terminally stupid.

Follow the rules whenever possible. That makes it a lot more surprising when you break them.

The seas did not forgive, and they did not welcome their wayward children home.

Me, I say those are all great things to live for, if they're what happens to float your boat, but at the end of the day, there's got to be somebody you're doing it for. Just one person you're thinking of everytime you make a decision, everytime you tell the truth, or tell a lie, or anything. I've got mine. Do you?

Humanity was cruel, and if you were prepared to try to find a bottom to that cruelty, you had best be prepared for a long, long fall.

Every life has a watershed moment, an instant when you realize you're about to make a choice that will define everything else you ever do, and that if you choose wrong, there may not be that many things left to choose. Sometimes the wrong choice is the only one that lets you face the end with dignity, grace, and the awareness that you're doing the right thing. I'm not sure we can recognize those moments until they've passed us.

If we didn't fear the truths we didn't hear, we'd lose the need to fear the ones we did.

It was beautiful, in its own terrible way. So many monsters are.

Failure to die is always appreciated.

It is what it is. Isn't that how these things always go? They are what they are. We just get to cope.

My father has always had just one piece of advice about zombies and ammunition, one he’s drilled into my head enough times that it’s managed to stick: When you have one bullet left and there’s no visible way out of the shit you’re standing in, save it for yourself. It’s better than the alternative.

A martyr's just a casualty with really good PR.

Think about that for a moment. They died for you. Now take a good look at the life you're living and tell me: Did they do the right thing?

I suggest it’s time we head off to see the Wizard. The wonderful Wizard of Jesus We Are All So Fucked.

He'll die first, we both know it, but I don't know... I really don't know how long I'll stay alive without him. That's the part Shaun doesn't know. I don't intend to be an only child for long.

Why is it you assholes always feel the need to tell the media your evil plans before you kill us?” asked Becks. “Is it a union requirement or something?

Rick stared at him. "Your brother is an alien." "Yeah, but he's a cute one.

Fuck survivor's guilt. I'm not supposed to be the guilty one here. The people who made me the last man standing... they're the guilty ones. And they're the ones who should be afraid.

Danger is a side effect of what I do, not the reason behind it.

And to those who would choose the safety of inaction over the danger of taking a stand, I have this to say: You bloody cowards. May you have the world that you deserve.

His idea of traffic safety is going too fast for the cops to catch up.

Shaun get your sister her glasses. She looks naked without them. It's creeping me out.

George, she says it's the truth that matters. We live and die for the chance to maybe tell a little bit of the truth, maybe shame the Devil just a little bit before we go.

...although I had to admit a certain affection for the Mattel booth advertising Urban Survival Barbie, now with her own Machete and blood testing unit.

We are a nation equally afraid of gathering together and being alone.

Fuck it. Let's blow some shit up." - Shaun Mason

...but that was the thing about reality. It didn't need to make sense.

I'm a decent sprinter and I can gun a motorcycle from zero to suicidal in less than ten seconds.

People crave fear.

At least you know that you're crazy. That means you have the potential to recover.

The only thing we have in this world that is utterly and intrinsically ours is our integrity.

There is nothing so patient, in this world or any other, as a virus searching for a host.

Some people say I have issues. I say those people need to expand their horizons because I don't have issues, I have the Library of Congress

That’s the trouble with being scared all the time. Eventually, people just go numb.

Last guy I was interested in turned out to be an incestuous necrophiliac," she said. "So no, not currently dating, and definitely not doing any more shopping in the 'sociopath' category

It's the oldest story in the world. Boy loves girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back thanks to the unethical behavior of megalomaniacal mad scientists who never met a corpse they wouldn't try to resurrect. Anyone coming within a hundred yards of my happy ending had better pray that they're immune to bullets. - Shaun Mason

Post-traumatic shock,' said Shaun. 'He thinks he's a boa constrictor.

There will always be people for whom hate is easier when it’s not backed up by anything but fear.

That,' he said, with almost religious fever, 'was the coolest thing you have ever done. In fact, that may have been the coolest thing you ever will do. Your entire existence has been moving toward one shining moment, George, and that was the moment when you thought, 'Hey, why don't I just go over the zombies?

He didn't have much strength to offer, but what he did have was hers without question.

Now I'm a God, but tomorrow, when you have to stop me from playing with dead things again, you'll be right back to calling me an idiot, won't you?

Do I think they found mermaids? Yes. Of course I do. And I think the mermaids ate them all.

Whoever authorized the evolution of the spiders of Australia should be summarily dragged out into the street and shot.

One man's gospel truth is another man's blasphemous lie. The dangerous thing about people is the way we'll try to kill anyone whose truth doesn't agree with ours.

You know, addressing my crazy by name doesn’t exactly help me stay sane,” I said. “Nothing can help you stay sane at this point, Mason,” said Becks. “That ship has sailed.

Usually what everyone knows is insulting and sort of ableist, because the people who know everything always seem to think of themselves as being perfectly normal.

...a truth you don't understand is more dangerous than a lie.

This is the truth: We are a nation accustomed to being afraid. If I’m being honest, not just with you but with myself, it’s not just the nation, and it’s not just something we’ve grown used to. It’s the world, and it’s an addiction. People crave fear. Fear justifies everything. Fear makes it okay to have surrendered freedom after freedom, until our every move is tracked and recorded in a dozen databases the average man will never have access to. Fear creates, defines, and shapes our world, and without it, most of us would have no idea what to do with ourselves. Our ancestors dreamed of a world without boundaries, while we dream new boundaries to put around our homes, our children, and ourselves. We limit our potential day after day in the name of a safety that we refuse to ever achieve. We took a world that was huge with possibility, and we made it as small as we could.

Behold the power of the truth. When people see its shadow on the wall, they don't want to take the time to look away.

Don't start. My mood stays better if you don't start.

You can't win. Logic has no power over her when her territory has been invaded by heathens.

As long as there was life in the sea, there would be teeth.

Isn't that the justification used by every scientist who made something wonderful, only to discover that they've made something terrible? 'We did it for Science.

Life's more fun when you take the chance that it might end.

Sometimes, the hardest habit to break is the habit of doing nothing beyond the necessary.

Sometimes humanity is the reason we can't have nice things.

Science is not a matter of belief. Science does not care whether you believe in it or not. Science will continue to do what science will do, free from morality, free from ethical concerns, and most of all, free from the petty worry that it will not be believed. Belief has shaped the history of human accomplishment—we believe we can, and so we do—but belief has never changed the natural world. The mountain does not vanish because we believe it should. The unicorn does not appear because we believe it will.

You're a mad scientist,' said Maggie, in what may well have been intended as a reassuring tone. 'We don't expect you to be nice. We just go to bed every night hoping you won't mutate us before we wake up.' Dr. Abbey blinked at her. 'That's...almost sweet. In a disturbing sort of a way.

Madness is surprisingly freeing.

I’m not insane, I’m neurologically variant,” she snapped back. “Sticks and stones, asshole.

This is crap," Shaun said, withdrawing his arm. "Right," I agreed. "Absolutely fucking crap." "No argument." "I want to punch somebody right about now." "Not it," Rick said. "I punch back," Steve said.

Then you know why I'm not in the mood for sunshine and puppies." I paused. "That expression makes no sense. Why the hell would I ever be in the mood for puppies?" "Shaun—" "I could go with sunshine, though. Sunshine is useful. It should really be 'sunshine and shotguns.' Something you'd actually be happy about." "Shaun—

I wanted the truth, and I wanted the news, and I'd be damned before I settled for anything less.

Now take a good look at the life you're living and tell me: Did they do the right thing?

I'd say it was nice knowing you, but as you've effectively ruined my life, it almost certainly hasn't been.

I've got no problem with octopuses. It's bugs and spiders that I don't like. Octopuses are cute, in their own 'nature did a lot of drugs' sort of way.

Sometimes in the news, "luck" is just a matter of "capitalizing on someone else's pain.

This is Shaun Mason activating security protocol Campbell. The bridge is out, the trees are coming, and I’m pretty sure my hand is evil. Now gimme some sugar, baby.

This was where darkness went to live forever, growing deeper and more powerful as the eons passed it by.

The trouble with discovery is that it goes two ways. For you to find something, that thing must also find you.

Curiosity is what it looks like when you’re in love with the world.

People say things like "it wasn't supposed to go this way" and "this isn't what I wanted." They're just making noise. There's no such thing as "supposed to," and what you want doesn't matter. All that matters is what happened.

How am I coping? I miss George and the goddamn world is still full of zombies, that's how. Everything else... Everything else is just details. And those don't really matter to me anymore.

This is what I do know: A lie, however well-intended, can't prepare you for reality or change the world... To tell the truth is to provide armament against a world too full of cruelties to be defeated with simple falsehoods... It seems to me we owe the world--more, we owe ourselves--the exchange of comfort for the chance that maybe the truth can do what people always say it can. The truth may, given the opportunity, set us free.

Don't think she can breathe over there, chief." drawled Shaun. "Pretty sure she hasn't kicked the oxygen habit yet..

All scientists are mad scientists.

Never steal another reporter's story; never take the last of another reporter's ammo; never mess with another reporter's computer. Those are the rules, unless you work for a tabloid, where they replace "never" with "always"...

...they come to us, these restless dead, Shrouds woven from the words of men, With trumpets sounding overhead (The walls of hope have grown so thin And all our vaunted innocence Has withered in this endless frost) That promise little recompense For all we risk, for all we've lost...

You really can't go home again. Sometimes, that's a good thing. Sometimes, when you try, you find out that home isn't really there anymore... but that it wasn't only in your head before. Home actually existed. Home wasn't just a dream. Sometimes, that's the best thing of all.

You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck it. The Rising didn't manage to wipe out the human race, it just made us turn into even bigger assholes than we were before. Hear that, mad science? You failed. You were supposed to kill us all, and instead you turned us into monsters.

The dangerous thing about truth is the way it changes depending on how you're looking at it. One man's gospel truth is another man's blasphemous lie. The dangerous thing about people is the way we'll try to kill anyone whose truth doesn't agree with ours.

There was one thing no one considered, however: Australia was populated by Australians. While the rest of us were trying to adapt to a world that suddenly seemed bent on eradicating the human race, the Australians had been dealing with a hostile environment for centuries. They looked upon our zombie apocalypse, and they were not impressed.

Remember how pissed you got when we had to do all that reading about the Rising back in sixth grade? I thought you were going to get us both expelled. You said the only way things could've gotten as bad as they did was if people were willing to take the first easy answer they could find and cling to it, rather than doing anything as complicated as actually thinking.

The Atargatis hadn’t found the mermaids through a free and open exchange of ideas. The Atargatis had found the mermaids because the people on the ship were made of meat, and the mermaids had empty stomachs that they wanted to fill. That was how you found things, in the sea. Be delicious. That was all you ever had to do.

What you have to understand about the mermaid legend is that it's universal. No matter where you go, the mermaids got there first. Even inland, if there's a big enough lake, I guarantee you there's a local community with a story about women in the water with beautiful voices who lure men to their deaths. Where there's water, we find mermaids. Maybe it's time we started asking ourselves exactly why that is.