110+ Rick Yancey Quotes On Education, Prayer And Imaginative

Rick Yancey is an American novelist best known for his young adult fiction series, The 5th Wave. He has also written several other novels, including The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp and The Monstrumologist series. His writing often focuses on themes of science fiction, horror, and adventure. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Rick Yancey on leadership, life, love.

Top 10 Rick Yancey Quotes

1. Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing. Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.
2. Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky.
3. So often the monsters that crowd our minds are nothing more than the strange and thoroughly alien progeny of our own fearful fantasies.
4. You are the nest. You are the hatchling. You are the chrysalis. You are the progeny. You are the rot that falls from stars. You may not understand what I mean. You will.
5. If I had faced it then, I wouldn't be facing it now, but sooner or later you have to choose between running and facing the thing you thought you could not face.
6. Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.
7. The world is a clock winding down.
8. Human beings are remarkably resilient. When you think about it, our species has been teetering upon the edge of the existential cliff since Hiroshima. In short, we endure.
9. When I cry - when I let myself cry - that's who I cry for. I don't cry for myself. I cry for the Cassie that's gone. And I wonder what that Cassie would think of me. The Cassie who kills.
10. To hold on, you have to find something you’re willing to die for.

Rick Yancey Short Quotes

• His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield.
• And if humanity is the last war, then I am the battlefield.
• What were they thinking? 'It's an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!
• Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another.
• We are the hunters---and we are also the bait.
• It's hard to plan for what comes next when what comes next is not something you planned for.
• Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end.
• It isn't up to me to break his heart; that's time's job.
• You never know when the truth will come home. You can't choose the time. The time chooses you.
• It's like a cockroach working up a plan to defeat the shoe on its way down to crush it.

Rick Yancey Quotes About Life

I was a slave to something he believed to be silly and superstitious: the idea that all life was worth defending and that nothing justified surrender to the forces of destruction. — Rick Yancey

I don't care what the stars say about how small we are. One, even the smallest, weakest, most insignificant one, matters. — Rick Yancey

I didn't show up here to give your life purpose now that your life's over. That's up to you to figure out. — Rick Yancey

Some things you can never leave behind. They don't belong to the past. They belong to you. — Rick Yancey

I do not mean to mock or ridicule your life's work, for in one way at least it mimics my own: We have dedicated our lives to the pursuit of phantoms. The difference is the nature of those phantoms. Mine exist between other men's ears; yours live solely between your own. — Rick Yancey

Good God, man, what is that smell?" He eyed with disgust the doctor's filthy cloak. "Life," answered the doctor. — Rick Yancey

Rick Yancey Quotes About Love

My first favourite book was Are You My Mother? A picture book about a lost bird. After that my favourites changed almost yearly. I loved everything by Roald Dahl, but my favourite was probably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A librarian gave me a first edition of that book, which I treasure. — Rick Yancey

I will teach you to love death. I will empty you of grief and guilt and self-pity and fill you up with hate and cunning and the spirit of vengeance. I will make my final stand here, Benjamin Thomas Parish. — Rick Yancey

Have you fallen in love, Will Henry?" "That's stupid." "What is? Love, or my question?" "I don't know." "You don't know? You've tried that trick once. What do you suppose it will work better the second time?" "I don't love her. She bothers me." "You have just defined the very thing you denied. — Rick Yancey

You're mortal, and only a mortal can afford to be romantic. When we conquered death, we murdered love. — Rick Yancey

Nothing makes us love something more than the loss of it. — Rick Yancey

She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all — Rick Yancey

As long as you draw breath anywhere -here or ten thousands miles from here- I will love you. I can't help loving you, so I choose to hate you...to make my love bearable. — Rick Yancey

Rick Yancey Famous Quotes And Sayings

Sci-Fi is the genre that explored both possibilities: the end of our existential crisis and the end of our existence. My novel, The 5th Wave, explores the latter scenario, because, frankly, I believe it represents the likeliest outcome of an extraterrestrial encounter. In short, if they're out there, we better hope they never find us. — Rick Yancey

I had it all wrong," he says. "Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold on was to find something to live for. It isn't. To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for. — Rick Yancey

We are slaves, all of us...Some are slaves to fear. Others are slaves to reason—or base desire. It is our lot to be slaves...and the question must be to what shall we owe our indenture? Will it be to truth or to falsehood, hope or despair, light or darkness? I choose to serve the light, even though that bondage often lies in darkness. — Rick Yancey

I would kill for a cheeseburger. Honestly. If I stumbled across someone eating a cheeseburger, I would kill them for it. — Rick Yancey

Maybe the last human being on Earth won't die of starvation or exposure or as a meal of wild animals. Maybe the last one to die will be killed by the last one alive. — Rick Yancey

A word of advice, Will Henry. When a person of the female gender says she wants to show you something, run the other way. The odds are it is not something you wish to see. — Rick Yancey

It's an either/or world now. — Rick Yancey

Why did they come billions of miles just to stare at us? It's rude. — Rick Yancey

It was the price of survival. The cost of his people's last, desperate gamble: To rid his new home of humanity, he had to become human. And being human, he had to overcome his humanity. — Rick Yancey

In every creepy movie ever made, the barn is the prime nesting ground for the things you don't know you're looking for and always regret finding. — Rick Yancey

Climb onto my shoulders. I will not let you fall. — Rick Yancey

I'm one, too," he said. "What?" He spit a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. "A virgin." What a shock. "What makes you think I'm a virgin?" I asked. "You wouldn't have hit me if you weren't. — Rick Yancey

Prayers and promises. The one his sister made to him. The unspoken one I made to my sister. Prayers are promises, too, and these are the days of broken promises. — Rick Yancey

The harder survival becomes, the more you want to pull together. And the more you want to pull together, the harder survival becomes. — Rick Yancey

Could there be irony crueler than this? How, upon his rescue, the truth had brought him here, to a house for the mad, for only a madman believes what every child knows to be true: There are monsters that lie in wait under our beds. — Rick Yancey

What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. You're beating plowshares into swords, Vosch. You are remaking us. We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece. — Rick Yancey

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness. — Rick Yancey

To hell with monsters and to hell with men. There is no difference to me. — Rick Yancey

But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield. — Rick Yancey

To show mercy is not naïve. To hold out against the end of hope is not stupidity or madness. It is fundamentally human. Of course... We are all doomed; we are all poisoned from our birth by the rot of stars. That does not mean we should succumb...to the seductive fallacy of despair, the dark tide that would drown us. You may think I'm stupid, you may call me a madman and a fool, but at least I stand upright in a fallen world. — Rick Yancey

Soon I will fall asleep and I will wake from this terrible dream. The endless night will fall, and I will rise. I long for that night. I do not fear it. I have had my fill of fear. I have stared too long into the abyss, and now the abyss stares back at me. — Rick Yancey

I'm here because they've killed almost all of us, but not all of us. And that's their mistake, son. That's the flaw in their plan. Because if you don't kill all of us at once, whoever's left are not going to be the weak ones. The strong ones- and only the strong ones- will survive. The bent but unbroken, if you know what I mean. People like me. And people like you. — Rick Yancey

Hold on tight, Sam." He puts me in a choke hold. "Ahhh," I gasp. "Not that tight. — Rick Yancey

A man lies upon the floor, spreads his arms, and transforms himself into a ship of a thousand sails. — Rick Yancey

But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that's important. — Rick Yancey

How oft do they rescue or ruin us, through whimsy or design or a combination of both, the adults to whom we entrust our care! — Rick Yancey

If the world breaks a million and one promises, can you trust the million and second? — Rick Yancey

I don't move. I wait behind my log, terrified. Over the past ten minutes, it's become such a dear friend, I consider naming it: Howard, my pet log. — Rick Yancey

The cold stars spun to the ancient rhythm, the august march of an everlasting symphony. They are old, the stars, and their memory is long. — Rick Yancey

After another half second, he's locked me in a bear hug, crushing me into his chest and lifting my feet a couple inches off the ground as I kick furiously with my heels, twisting my head back and forth, snapping at his forearm with my teeth. And the whole time his lips tickling the delicate skin of my ear. "Cassie. Don't. Cassie..." "Let...me...go." "That's been the whole problem. I can't. — Rick Yancey

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life. — Rick Yancey

We are very much like them: indiscriminate killers, ruled by drives little acknowledged and less understood, mindlessly territorial and murderously jealous - the only significant difference being that they have yet to master our expertise in hypocrisy, the gift of our superior intellect that enables us to slaughter one another in droves, more often than not under the auspices of an approving god! — Rick Yancey

Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form. — Rick Yancey

The kid who didn't go back when he should have and now goes back when he shouldn't. The kid called Zombie, who made a promise, and if he breaks that promise, the war is over - not the big war, but the war that matters, the one in the battlefield of his heart. Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever. — Rick Yancey

Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever. — Rick Yancey

And then Evan Walker kisses me. — Rick Yancey

A child has little defense against the sight of a parent laid low. Parents, like the earth beneath our feet and the sun above our heads, are immutable objects, eternal and reliable. If one should fall, who might vouch the sun itself won't fall, burning, into the sea? — Rick Yancey

There are those who labor in the darkness, that the rest of us might live in the light. — Rick Yancey

Time for the world to end. — Rick Yancey

Perhaps God waits for us to be empty, so he may fill us with himself. — Rick Yancey

Still, you tend to believe what you always believed, think what you always thought, expect what you always expected — Rick Yancey

You can’t force yourself to trust. So you put all your doubts in a little box and bury it deep and then try to forget where you buried it — Rick Yancey

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you. — Rick Yancey

Just because a man is a homicidal maniac doesn't make him wrong. — Rick Yancey

Tampons. I’m constantly worrying about my stash and if I’ll be able to find more. — Rick Yancey

There's the bullshit you know that you know; the bullshit you don't know and know you don't know; and the bullshit you just think you know but really don't. — Rick Yancey

When the moment comes to stop running from your past, to turn around and face the thing you thought you could not face--the moment when your life teeters between giving up and getting up--when that moment comes, and it always comes, if you can't get up and you can't give up either, here's what you do: Crawl. — Rick Yancey

I start to unbutton his shirt. "Got to get these clothes off," I mutter. "You don't know how long I've waited to hear you say that." Smile. Lopsided. Sexy. — Rick Yancey

We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece. — Rick Yancey

Some things you don't have to promise. You just do. — Rick Yancey

And in more than half the pictures, she isn't looking at the camera; she's looking at him. Not the way I would look at Ben Parish, all squishy around the eyes. She looks at Evan fiercely, like, This here? It's mine — Rick Yancey

Adolphus is not at his desk. That means he is somewhere in the Monstrumarium, has gone home for the day, or is dead. — Rick Yancey

Sarcasm doesn't appear to work on him. If that's true, I'm in trouble: It's my normal mode of communication. — Rick Yancey

Then the door flew open and Mr. Faulks told us to head over to the gym. I thought that was really smart. Get all of us in one place so the aliens didn't have to waste a lot of ammunition. — Rick Yancey

When you look death in the eye and death blinks first, nothing seems impossible. — Rick Yancey

And no answer when we sent our message. Something like, "Hello, welcome to Earth. Hope you enjoy your stay. Please don't kill us. — Rick Yancey

Yes, my dear child, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement. — Rick Yancey

I have a very low tolerance for boredom and often think I would have missed out on books entirely if Id grown up in the Internet and video game age. Now I enjoy books for people of all ages, including children. — Rick Yancey

Memories can bring comfort to the old and infirm, but memories can also be implacable foes, a malicious army of temporal ghosts forever pillaging the long-sought-after peace of our twilight years. — Rick Yancey

Because we will die, but at least we will die unbroken. — Rick Yancey

When I woke up in you, Cassie. I wasn't fully human until I saw myself in your eyes." And then there are real human tears in his real human eyes, and it's my turn to hold him while his heart breaks. My turn to see myself in his eyes. — Rick Yancey

I am the one, Not Running, Not Staying, But FACING — Rick Yancey

What boy my age didn’t dream of fleeing the well-tended lawn and lamp-lit street for the untamed wilderness, where grand adventure awaited on the other side of the horizon, where the stars burned undimmed in the velvet sky above his head and the virgin ground lay untrodden beneath his feet? — Rick Yancey

Dr. Warthrop chopped off my finger with a butcher knife. — Rick Yancey

I am a shark, Cassie," he says slowly, drawing the words out, as if he might be speaking to me for the last time. Looking into my eyes with tears in his, as if he's seeing me for the last time. "A shark who dreamed he was a man. — Rick Yancey

There was, like, this black hole where the world used to be, and we were both falling toward it. What could we hold on to? — Rick Yancey

You can only call someone crazy if there’s someone else who’s normal. Like good and evil. If everything was good, then nothing would be good. — Rick Yancey

When I wake up the next morning, there's a Hershey's Kiss sitting on the table beside me. — Rick Yancey

Are you okay?" I (Cassie) call up to him. "Um. Define okay." (Ben) "Okay means you're not bleeding to death." "I'm okay. — Rick Yancey

And red is not the color of apples or roses or the dresses that pretty girls wear in the summertime. That is not the color of red at all. — Rick Yancey

We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time. — Rick Yancey

I didn't save you," he whispers, lips tickling my eyelashes. "You saved me. — Rick Yancey

Great sci-fi has never shied from tackling the Big Questions, though really great sci-fi never forgets to entertain us along the way. Shock and awe applies to art, as well. — Rick Yancey

That's what you do when the curtain is falling--you give the line that the audience wants to hear. — Rick Yancey

There's a hero in every heart waiting for the dragon to come out. — Rick Yancey

You are the human clay," Vosch whispers fiercely in my ear. "And I am Michelangelo. I am the master builder, and you will be my masterpiece. — Rick Yancey

He asks me what happened to my leg. I told him I was shot by a shark. He doesn't react. Doesn't seem confused or amused or anything. Like getting shot by a shark is a perfectly natural thing in the aftermath of the arrival. — Rick Yancey

A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn't cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost. His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield. With a cry only he could hear, the hunter turned. And ran. — Rick Yancey

It wasn't aliens that first made us gear up for war; it was our fellow humans. — Rick Yancey

The monstrous act by definition demands a monster. — Rick Yancey

Miss Marks, you see, makes her living by...entertaining young, and not so young, sailors...or any other members of the armed forced, or civilians, who enjoy...being entertained by ladies who...entertain. — Rick Yancey

I'm not encouraged by the silence. I can think of no benign reason for it. I'm afraid we may expect something closer to Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas than a scene from Close Encounters, and we all know how that turned out for the Native Americans. — Rick Yancey

Then I strip the pants away from each leg, like peeling a banana. That's it, the perfect metaphor: peeling a banana. — Rick Yancey

I thought I knew what loneliness was before he found me, but I had no clue. You don't know what real loneliness is until you've known the opposite. — Rick Yancey

The doctor frowned upon drinking and often expressed wonderment at men who willingly made imbeciles of themselves. — Rick Yancey

Life Lessons by Rick Yancey

1. Rick Yancey teaches us to never give up, no matter how difficult the situation may seem. He encourages us to keep pushing forward, even when the odds seem insurmountable.
2. Yancey also emphasizes the importance of resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity. He shows us that it is possible to overcome any obstacle with a positive attitude and a strong will.
3. Finally, Yancey's work shows us that it is important to stay true to ourselves and our values, no matter what the world throws at us. He teaches us to stay focused on our goals and never give up on our dreams.