Wong Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Wong. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
And watch out for Molly. See if she does anything unusual. There’s something I don’t trust about the way she exploded and then came back from the dead like that.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
But remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.
David Wong
Something coming back from the dead was almost always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Fred said, “Man, I think he’s gonna make a fuckin’ suit of human skin, using the best parts from each of us.” “Holy crap,” said John. “He’ll be gorgeous.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Just in case, though, I stormed into my apartment, tossed a quick hello to Mr. Wong, then rummaged through my entertainment center to lay out all my exorcism equipment. I kept it in my entertainment center because exorcisms were nothing if not entertaining.
Darynda Jones (First Grave on the Right (Charley Davidson, #1))
SHUT UP. Both of you. You're coming with me." To me he said, "Put some pants on." "Fuck you. This is my house. I make the rules. You take your clothes off. John, get the Twister mat.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
When a man plans, a woman laughs.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
See you in a few. Hold down the fort, Mr. Wong!
Darynda Jones (First Grave on the Right (Charley Davidson, #1))
He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.
In the Mood for Love 2000 Wong Kar-wai
Are the most dangerous creatures the ones that use doors or the ones that don't?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
You see, Frank found out the hard way that the dark things lurking in the night don’t haunt old houses or abandoned ships. They haunt minds.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
I know the Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider can't fly because if it could, it would have a different name entirely. We would call it "sir" because it would be the dominant species on the planet. None of us would leave the house unless a Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider said it was okay
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
Let's say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don't worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you're the one who shot him.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
You know if you walked around the world, your hat would travel thirty-one feet farther than your shoes?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Falling in love with a house or a car or a pair of shoes, it was a dead end. You save your love for the things that can love you back.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
She sat one of the fluffy cats in my lap and stuffed the other down my shirt. She turned and left. 'There,' said the large man. 'The kittens will make your sad go away.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
You're the kind of man a man wants when a man wants a man.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
The situation has a real Lovecraft feel to it. Though, you know, if you come over it'll be more of an Anne Rice situation. If you know what I mean." "Who's-" "Because you're gay.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Wong takon wosing dur angkoro.. Antarane riko aku iki--Titi Kolo Mongso
Sujiwo Tejo
Antidepressants. The thought of this girl actually being depressed made me want to grab the whole planet and throw it into the sun. Well, more than usual anyway.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
The zombie looks like a man, walks like a man, eats and otherwise functions fully, yet is devoid of the spark. It represents the nagging doubt that lays deep in the heart of even the most zealous believer: behind all of your pretty songs and stained glass, this is what you really are. Shambling meat. Our true fear of the zombie was never that its bite would turn us into one of them. Our fear is that we are already zombies.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
People like me know that there is no magic. There is only the grind. Work looks like magic to those unwilling to do it.
David Wong (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe, #1))
What humans want most of all, is to be right. Even if we're being right about our own doom. If we believe there are monsters around the next corner ready to tear us apart, we would literally prefer to be right about the monsters, than to be shown to be wrong in the eyes of others and made to look foolish.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
Keep driving," said a soft voice in my ear. "She will not bite if you keep driving." Fuck that. Fuck that idea like the fucking Captain of the Thai Fuck Team fucking at the fucking Tour de Fuck.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
There is no word in the English language for the feeling someone gets when they suddenly realize they're standing next to an unholy monster impersonating a human. Monstralization, maybe?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
The answers to making it, to me, are a lot more universal than anyone's race or gender, and center on having a tolerance for delayed gratification, a passion for the craft, and a willingness to fail.
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
... life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it's out. Forever.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
We're talking about a tentacled flying lamp fucker, Dave. What are you prepared to call unlikely?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Nobody involved in a conflict thinks they’re the villain.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
Which would prove I'm a monster, Arnie? Sacrificing the people I love for the fight? Or walking away from the fight to save the people i love?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
She said, “Why do you, like, hate yourself?” “If I knew me as somebody else, I would hate me just as much. Why have a double standard?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
PEOPLE DIE. This is the fact the world desperately hides from us from birth. Long after you find out the truth about sex and Santa Claus, this other myth endures, this one about how you’ll always get rescued at the last second and if not, your death will at least mean something and there’ll be somebody there to hold your hand and cry over you. All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you’ll die, and you’ll probably be alone.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Just accept that you’re not a genius. Once I told myself that, I was able to finally write.
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
So Jason, in England, do you eat these ‘Farmer burgers?’” Wong Tong asked. “Farmer burgers? I don’t know what they are?” “Maybe I have the name wrong. I remember the name from the song,” Wong Tong explained. “What song?” Jason asked. “You know the ‘E, I, E, I, O’ song.” ‘E, I, E, I, O’ song? Jason started to roar with laughter. He tried to speak but was laughing, much to the annoyance of Wong Tong. He held his chest, laughing still hurt his ribs. “You mean the ‘Old Macdonald had a farm’ song. You mean Macdonald’s burgers,” he said, laughing. “Yes, I have had them. They’re good.
Mark A. Cooper (Revenge (Jason Steed, #2))
My melon soul Crushed by your Gallagher of apathy
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
He made the engine growl and told the headlights to fuck the night.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
John, let me make one thing clear,” Jim said, cutting me off in his most stern, evangelical voice. “Every man is blessed with his gifts from the Lord. One of mine happens to be a penis large enough that, if it had a penis of its own, my penis’ penis would be larger than your penis.”..... ..."Fuck all of you,” John retorted. “You don’t even exist. We’re all just a figment of my cock’s imagination.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Diversity isn’t a trend; it’s a constant battle to change an existing culture that shuts us out.
Alyssa Wong
There are two types of people on planet Earth, Batman and Iron Man. Batman has a secret identity, right? So Bruce Wayne has to walk around every second of every day knowing that if somebody finds out his secret, his family is dead, his friends are dead, everyone he loves gets tortured to death by costumed supervillains. And he has to live with the weight of that secret every day. But not Tony Stark, he's open about who he is. He tells the world he's Iron Man, he doesn't give a shit. He doesn't have that shadow hanging over him, he doesn't have to spend energy building up those walls of lies around himself. You're one or the other - either you're one of those people who has to hide your real self because it would ruin you if it came out, because of your secret fetishes or addictions or crimes, or you're not one of those people. And the two groups aren't even living in the same universe.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
Welcome to freakdom, Dave. It’ll be time to start a Web site soon, where you’ll type out everything in one huge paragraph.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
They didn’t have witch hunts because they believed in witches. They believed in witches so they could have witch hunts.
David Wong (What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3))
The man walked past me and stopped, observing the blood running down my neck. "Your injury. Let us tend to it." He looked out through the open doorway and silently gestured to someone out there. "Our world," he said, "is far more advanced than yours. For reasons you'll understand shortly." A thin, bony, naked woman entered the room, carrying two small, white kittens. She sat one of the fluffy cats in my lap and stuffed the other down my shirt. She turned and left. "There," said the large man. "The kittens will make your sad go away.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Guys like him, the ones who grip the Bible so tight they leave fingernail grooves, they're the ones who are the most scared of their dark side. Always going too far the other way, fighting for the Lord, often just because it gives them an excuse to fight.
David Wong
That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives A Fuck.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
From day one it was like society was this violent, complicated dance and everybody had taken lessons but me. Knocked to the floor again, climbing to my feet each time, bloody and humiliated. Always met with disapproving faces, waiting for me to leave so I'd stop fucking up the party. The wanted to push me outside, where the freaks huddled in the cold. Out there with the misfits, the broken, the glazed-eye types who can only watch as the normals enjoy their shiny new cars and careers and marriages and vacations with the kids. The freaks spend their lives shambling around, wondering how they got left out, mumbling about conspiracy theories and bigfoot sightings. Their encounters with the world are marked by awkward conversations and stifled laughter, hidden smirks and rolled eyes. And worst of all, pity.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
John cursed himself. Or rather, he cursed the past version of himself for so thoughtlessly screwing over the current version of himself.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
What Do Women Want?" I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap, I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what's underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. I want to walk like I'm the only woman on earth and I can have my pick. I want that red dress bad. I want it to confirm your worst fears about me, to show you how little I care about you or anything except what I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment from its hanger like I'm choosing a body to carry me into this world, through the birth-cries and the love-cries too, and I'll wear it like bones, like skin, it'll be the goddamned dress they bury me in.
Kim Addonizio
You have suffered enough." That became my mantra for motherhood from there on out. You have suffered enough. If you can make it easier, make it easier, and don't feel guilty about it.
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
He gave me a look that would have made cancer apologize, then ran like hell.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
John flung himself into a pseudo-karate stance, one hand poised behind him and one in front, posed like a cartoon cactus. I thought for an odd moment he had moved his limbs so fast they had made that whoosh sound through air but then I realized John was making that sound with his mouth.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
That ability to see the right choice, but not until several hours have passed since making the wrong one? That’s what makes a person a dumbass, folks.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
They came looking for dark and terrible revelations and instead found out something even more dark and terrible: that their lives were trite and boring.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Problem isn’t that there’s not enough heroes in the world, problem is too many dumb people assume they are one.
David Wong (What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3))
The English language needs a word for that feeling you get when you badly need help, but there is no one you can call because you're not popular enough to have friends, not rich enough to have employees, and not powerful enough to have lackeys. It is a very distinct cocktail of impotence, loneliness and a sudden stark assessment of your non-worth to society? Enturdment?
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
I wanted to curl up into a fetal position and start sucking my thumb, let my tears and dripping saliva pool under me. Sorry. I tried living, tried being sentient. Can't do it. Can't live in the same universe with that.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
I didn’t cry. And if you think I did, good luck proving it, asshole.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to. Society has got me so fucking trained. I rubbed my eyes and groaned and felt utterly alone in the world.
David Wong
I keep the gun in a hollowed out copy of the Koran. And there the big book was, tossed on the bed, open and gunless. Nothing else disturbed. I mean, they actually checked my Koran to see if there was a gun inside. I knew I was dealing with a sick son of a bitch.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Society is nothing more than people cooperating with other people they'd much rather murder.
David Wong (What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3))
Damn it! I knew she was a monster! John! Amy! Listen! Guard your buttholes.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
The bathroom door burst open, and Molly came trotting out. The left half of her body had been shaved almost down to the skin. The right half was as shaggy as before. John emerged after her, brushing a layer of dog hair off his clothes. John said, "Well, that's done... It was Molly's idea. She wants to look like two different dogs when she's coming and going. She thinks it will make it easier for her to steal food... That's one complicated dog, Dave. Have you started on the bomb?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
ANYBODY ORDER A JAILBREAK WITH A SIDE OF SHOTGUN?
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
John. I would ask you what you are doing, but I fear you would actually tell me.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
People always say that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, but honestly, people should try solving murders more often.
Jesse Q. Sutanto (Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers)
To this day I don’t know if he was struggling with the moral implications of gunning down half a dozen civilians, or if he was mentally counting to see if he had that many shells left in the gun.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
I also understood why my mom wasn’t into processing her feelings, and how she was taught to just get over tragedy. To survive, she had to believe things like depression and allergies were a choice.
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
If I knew me as somebody else, I would hate me just as much. Why have a double standard?
David Wong
A clean conscience is expensive, it’s the reason most men have to live paycheck to paycheck.
David Wong (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe, #1))
You want sympathy, you can find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.
David Wong (What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3))
One more victim sucked in by John. You get into the room with him and you just fall into a warm pool of beer and video games and penis jokes, staring at the universe with him and saying, "Do you believe this shit?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Karena aku tahu di ujung cinta ini tidak ada kebahagiaan, tapi aku tetap jatuh ke dalamnya.
Fenny Wong (Lapis Lazuli)
...and - holy shit was this song bad. It was like the singer was stabbing my ear with a dagger made of dried turds.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Welcome to Undisclosed. Dreams Interpreted for Beer.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
My shame circuits burned out from overuse years ago.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
SOCIETY IS DOOMED for one very simple reason: it takes dozens of men working months with millions of dollars in materials to build a building, but only one dumb-ass with a bomb to bring it down.
David Wong (John Dies at the End)
I feel stretched out, like too little butter scraped over too much waffle. And then it all falls down into one of the waffle holes and there's none left for the rest of the waffle and you sort of have to tilt it to make it run out.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
The human eye has to be one of the cruelest tricks nature ever pulled. We can see a tiny, cone-shaped area of light right in front of our faces, restricted to a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can’t see around walls, we can’t see heat or cold, we can’t see electricity or radio signals, we can’t see at a distance. It is a sense so limited that we might as well not have it, yet we have evolved to depend so heavily on it as a species that all other perception has atrophied. We have wound up with the utterly mad and often fatal delusion that if we can’t see something, it doesn’t exist. Virtually all of civilization’s failures can be traced back to that one ominous sentence: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ We can’t even convince the public that global warming is dangerous. Why? Because carbon dioxide happens to be invisible.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
I had seen that look before, on the faces of tourists visiting the Texas Book Depository in Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald took the shots at JFK. I took that tour and met some conspiracy buffs, all of us standing at the gunman’s window and looking down to the spot where the motorcade passed. It’s right there below the window, an easy shot at a slow-moving car. No mystery, just a kid and a rifle and a tragedy. They came looking for dark and terrible revelations and instead found out something even more dark and terrible: that their lives were trite and boring.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
I call it Dante’s Syndrome,” John said. I had never heard him call it any such thing. “Meaning I think Dave and I gained the ability to peer into Hell. Only it turns out Hell is right here, it’s all through us and around us and in us like the microbes that swarm through your lungs and guts and veins. Hey, look! An owl!” We all looked. It was an owl, all right.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
She forks up a little nibble and wedges it in her mouth. "Yum," she croaks. Mrs. Wong looks pleased. "It's made with tofu." I can't resist. "Free-range tofu?" My mother looks over at me sharply. Mrs. Wong takes the bait. "Now, Cassidy, tofu isn't an animal," she chides. "It's soy bean curd. Soy bean curd doesn't need to roam free." On the floor below me, Emma lets out a little snort. I nudge her again with my foot. We're both grinning at the thought of a corral somewhere with little cubes of tofu wandering around. "Home, home on the range," I sing to her under my breath. "Where the deer and the tofu roam free...
Heather Vogel Frederick
Well, they never know they're ill, do they? You can't diagnose yourself with the same organ that has the disease, just like you can't see your own eyeball. So, I suppose you just feel normal and the rest of the world seems to go crazy around you.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
He whipped the chair around and actually split one of the things in half with the impact, spilling the spray of blood that was reflective, like mercury. John bellowed, "Anyone else want to donate blood to chair-ity?" He ducked into the the door and bashed one monster right in the wig, screaming, "There's some dessert! With a chair-y on top!
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
My mom was never the type to write me long letters or birthday cards. We never got mani-pedis together, she never gave me a locket with our picture in it. She wouldn't tell me I looked beautiful, or soothe me when a boy broke my heart. But she was there. She kept me safe. She did her best to make me tough. She fed me the most delicious home-cooked meals. For lunch, she'd pack me rare sliced steak over white rice and steamed broccoli. She sent me to private school from kindergarten through twelfth grade. She is still there for me. She will always be there for me, as long as she's able. That's a great mom.
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
You take risks; you get hurt. And you put your head down and plow forward anyway and if you die, you die. That’s the game. But don’t tell me you’re not a hero. You walk away, you’re choosing to walk away. Whatever bad things happen as a result, you’re choosing to let them happen. You can lie to yourself, say that you never had a choice, that you weren’t cut out for this. But deep down you’ll know. You’ll know that humans aren’t cut out for anything. We cut ourselves out. Slowly, like a rusty knife. Because otherwise, here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to die and you’re going to stand at the gates of judgement and you’re going to ask God what was the meaning of it all, and God will say, ‘I created the universe, you little shit. It was up to you to give it meaning.
David Wong (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe, #1))
Fred whispered, “Okay. If I don’t come back, and say they don’t got my body, like if Justin eats me or somethin’, tell everybody you don’t know what happened. Make it mysterious. And then a year later spread rumors that you’ve seen me wanderin’ around town. That way I’ll be like fuckin’ Bigfoot, everybody claiming to have seen me here and there. Legend of Fred Chu.” John nodded, as if he were committing this to memory. He lit his own firebombs, glanced up at me and asked,“You got any final requests, in case this don’t end well?” “Yeah. Avenge my death.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
People ask me, “Have you tried yoga? Kombucha? This special water?” And I don’t have the energy to explain that yes, I’ve tried them. I’ve tried crystals and healing drum circles and prayer and everything. What I want to try is acceptance. I want to see what happens if I can simply accept myself for who I am: battered, broken, hoping for relief, still enduring somehow. I will still take a cure if it’s presented to me, but I am so tired of trying to bargain with the universe for some kind of cure. The price is simply too high to live chasing cures, because in doing so, I’m missing living my life. I know only that in chasing to achieve the person I once was, I will miss the person I have become.
Alice Wong (Disability Visibility : First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century)
No. He says when you're dealing with any kids of supernatural beings, Gods and Devils and angels, you tend to think about them like hurricanes or earthquakes, some kind of mindless force of nature. But if they're real, then they have minds. They know your name. So even reading about the Devil tips him off, he knows instantly he's being read about and that you're somebody he may have to deal with. And I'm thinking what you did in Vegas went way, way beyond that." "What 'I' did? What about us? We were both there." "Yeah but I cut my hair since then. They probably think that was a different guy.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
At this point two elderly security guards in parkas, the guys who normally work the front desk at the plant, asked John to step behind the tape. John claims that here he told the guards that he could not speak English and when that failed to persuade them, he fa...ked a violent seizure. I am unclear as to the purpose of this part of his plan. John flung himself down and began rolling around in the snow, thrashing his limbs about and screaming “EL SEIZURE!!! NO ES BUENO!!!” in a Mexican accent.
David Wong
Well, I’m going to tell you the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. Heroes aren’t born. You just go out there and grind it out. You fail and you look foolish and you just keep grinding. There is nothing else. There is no ‘chosen one,’ there is no destiny, nobody wakes up one day and finds out they’re amazing at something. There’s just slamming your head into the wall, refusing to take no for an answer. Being relentless, until either the wall or your head breaks. You want to be a hero? You don’t have to make some grand decision. There’s no inspirational music, there’s no montage. You just don’t quit.
David Wong (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe, #1))
What worries me most about the proposals for legalized assisted suicide is their veneer of beneficence—the medical determination that for a given individual, suicide is reasonable or right. It is not about autonomy but about nondisabled people telling us what’s good for us. In the discussion that follows, I argue that choice is illusory in a context of pervasive inequality. Choices are structured by oppression. We shouldn’t offer assistance with suicide until we all have the assistance we need to get out of bed in the morning and live a good life. Common causes of suicidality—dependence, institutional confinement, being a burden—are entirely curable.
Alice Wong (Disability Visibility : First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century)
Amy hated--hated--the way the grown-ups her parents had surrounded themselves with were so quick to offer prayers and so low to actually do anything. Old women who barely left the house for anything but bingo and congratulated themselves on never drinking alcohol or saying dirty words, thinking God created humans to stay home and watch televangelists and just run out the clock until the day they die. Well, Amy figured you don't need more than five minutes on this planet to figure out that one thing we know about God--maybe the only thing--is that he favors those who act. David also believed that, through he didn't realize it.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him. He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs-you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face. On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand-new handle for your ax. The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade. Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand-new head for your ax. As soon as you get home, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded earlier. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last winter” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life. You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!” IS HE RIGHT?
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
Congratulations, now you know the single reason why the world is the way it is. You see the problem right away—everything we do requires cooperation in groups larger than a hundred and fifty. Governments. Corporations. Society as a whole. And we are physically incapable of handling it. So every moment of the day we urgently try to separate everyone on earth into two groups—those inside the sphere of sympathy and those outside. Black versus white, liberal versus conservative, Muslim versus Christian, Lakers fan versus Celtics fan. With us, or against us. Infected versus clean. “We simplify tens of millions of individuals down into simplistic stereotypes, so that they hold the space of only one individual in our limited available memory slots. And here is the key—those who lie outside the circle are not human. We lack the capacity to recognize them as such. This is why you feel worse about your girlfriend cutting her finger than you do about an earthquake in Afghanistan that kills a hundred thousand people. This is what makes genocide possible. This is what makes it possible for a CEO to sign off on a policy that will poison a river in Malaysia and create ten thousand deformed infants. Because of this limitation in the mental hardware, those Malaysians may as well be ants.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It (John Dies at the End, #2))
I was going back and reading Marconi’s last book again, and there’s this part that always gets me. He points out that the amount of the universe a human can experience is statistically, like, zero percent. You’ve got this huge universe, trillions of trillions of miles of empty space between galaxies, and all a human can perceive is a little tunnel a few feet wide and a few feet long in front of our eyes. So he says we don’t really live in the universe at all, we live inside our brains. All we can see is like a blurry little pinhole in a blindfold, and the rest is filled in by our imagination. So whatever we think of the world, whether you think the world is cruel or good or cold or hot or wet or dry or big or small, that comes entirely from inside your head and nowhere else.
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
John and I have made this stuff our hobby, in the way that an especially attractive prisoner makes a hobby out of not getting raped. Jesus, that’s a terrible analogy. I apologize. What I’m saying is that it’s self-preservation. We didn’t choose this, we just have talents that makes us the equivalent of that new guy in the cell block who has a slim, hairless body and kind of looks like a woman from behind, and has an incredibly realistic tattoo of boobs on his back. He may have no desire at all to ever even touch a penis, but it’s going to happen, even if it’s just in the process of frantically slapping them away. Jesus, am I still talking about this? [John—please delete the above paragraph before it goes off to the publisher].
David Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End, #2))
A reporter once asked me why I think progressive men who earn significantly less than their breadwinning wives still won't quit their jobs to take care of their children. Why do they still hold on to their careers, even if taking care of the children would make more financial sense because the cost of childcare is higher than their net salary? I think I know the answer to that now, and it sucks. Women are not expected to live a life for themselves. When women dedicate their lives to children, it is deemed a worthy and respectable choice. When women dedicate themselves to a passion outside of the family that doesn't involve worshiping their husbands or taking care of their kids, they're seen as selfish, cold, or unfit mothers. But when a man spends hours grueling over a craft, profession, or project, he's admired and seen as a genius. And when a man finds a woman who worships him, who dedicates her life to serving him, he's lucky. But when a man dedicates himself to taking care of his children it's seen as a last resort. That it must be because he ran out of other options. That it's plan Z. That it's an indicator of his inability to provide for his family. Basically, that he's a fucking loser. I think it's one of the most important falsehoods we need to shatter when talking about women's rights.
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)