Drew Magary > Quotes

“Every book was a door; every page a new place to hide.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“My favorite part of the party is when the party is over. When I don't feel obligated to have a good time, and I can just sit and chill with whoever's left to chill with, you know?”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“You become a parent, and your whole life becomes about worrying. You just worry constantly whether they'll be okay. And the idea that I'll be worried forever about them and what they do...I almost have a panic attack when I think about it. I'm worried, and I'm worried about having to worry so goddamn much.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Death is the only thing keeping us in line.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“This future you live in . . . would I like it?” “Honestly, it’s probably not that different from the world you know. Some people are happy. Some people are angry. There are wars. I don’t know if time makes much of a difference. The world changes, but people act the way people always do.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“I once met a traveler who told me he would live to see the end of time. He laid out all his vitamins before me and told me he slept seven hours every night, no more or less. All the life you want, he said. It's all within the palm of your hand now. He said he would outlast all the wars and all the diseases, long enough to remember everything, and long enough to forget everything. He'd be the last man still standing when the sun decides to collapse upon itself and history ends. He said he had found the safest place on earth, where he could stay until the gateway to the beyond opened before him. A thousand generations from today. I pictured him there, atop a remote and snowy mountain. The heavens opening and God congratulating him for his perseverance. Asking him to join Him and watch as the sun burns down to a dull orange cinder and everything around it breaks is orbit and goes tumbling tumbling away, everything that once seemed permanent pulled apart so effortlessly, like a ball of yarn. A life into divinity.
But I knew it was a lie. I've always known it was a lie. You can not hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“At 1 A.M. a parking garage feels like a crime scene in waiting.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“I know there's no heaven. I know it all turns to nothingness. But I fear there will be some remnant of me left within that void. Left conscious by some random fluke. Something that will scream out for this. That one speck of my soul will still exist and be left trapped and wanting. For you. For the light. For anything.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Thanks for everything, Pennsylvania, but fuck you eternally.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“You cannot hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“But everything's always been fucked up. Since the dawn of time. That's why people find each other. For comfort. For shelter. They find their own little crevice in the world, shielded from all the horror.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“You probably don't remember that, do you? Depression has a way of vaporizing big parts of your memory. Important parts.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“This is your life and the afterlife merged together in one perfect, endless existence.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always leave fingerprints
On furniture and walls
But every day I'm growing up
And soon I'll be so tall
That all those little handprints
Will be hard to recall
So here's a special handprint
Just so you can say
This is how my fingers looked
When I placed them here today.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“The world changes, but people act the way people always do.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“We're constantly judging and grading other parents, just to make sure that they aren't any better than us. I'm as guilty as anyone. I see some lady hand her kid a Nintendo DS at the supermarket and I instantly downgrade that lady to Shitty Parent status. I feel pressure to live up to a parental ideal that no one probably has ever achieved. I feel pressure to raise a group of human beings that will help America kick the shit out of Finland and South Korea in the world math rankings. I feel pressure to shield my kids from the trillion pages of hentai donkey porn out there on the Internet. I feel pressure to make the insane amounts of money needed for a supposedly 'middle-class' upbringing for the kids, an upbringing that includes a house and college tuition and health care and so many other expenses that you have to be a multimillionaire to afford it. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE.”
― Drew Magary, Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood

“Sometimes I think the fact that she died is the reason I'll never stop loving her. She wasn't around long enough for me to grow tired of her personality or her appearance. Every relationship seems to lead to that end. She said it herself. She left me just as my mind had perfected her. The prime condition of love...Sometimes I wonder if that's a good thing. I despise myself for thinking that.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“Why don't you crawl up out of that door and go get fucked by a turtle?"
That's completely unrealistic, anatomically speaking. That's not even something the turtle would want.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“Go to sleep, Crab."
"I don't sleep. I'm a crab. I only lie dormant."
"Why don't you sleep?"
"Because things will kill me if I do. I need to be in a state of constant awareness. Even if you think I'm sleeping, I'm not. I'm saving my energy so that I can fuck you up. Heads up 24/7.”
― Drew Magary

“Okay," I confessed. "You got me. I don't want to die. I'm terrified of death. I fear there's nothing beyond it and that this existence is the only one I'll ever possess. That's why I'm here."
He patted my leg to give me reassurance. "That's why they're all here. Even the ones that believe in heaven and seventy-two virgins and every other good thing supposedly waiting for them in the afterlife.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“She kept silent for fifty miles as he looked out his window at the last gasps of fall in the distant hills - pretty red and yellow swaths of foliage surrounded by sad patches of gray, like an unfinished oil painting.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“It's a fact that every minute you hold a child, it triples in mass.”
― Drew Magary, Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood

“Take any two-year-old through a car wash and their skulls are blown. FLAPS! FOAM! ROLLING THINGS! It's the closest they'll ever get to being inside a working spaceship.”
― Drew Magary, Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood

“I asked XMN if perhaps this is not the best way to spend one's time. I asked if it might be a symptom of a much deeper personal problem that he has failed to address. He thinks for a moment. "Yeah I'm sure that's part of it. Then again, I don't know if the problems I have can ever be fixed. I don't know how you go about being reborn into a family that loves you. I think I'm damaged permanently. And if that's the case, everyone else deserves the same fate.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“It took a year for us to conceive our second child. This is a common ordeal for the average middle-class American couple that puts off having children until their thirties. We knew so many other couples that had experienced fertility problems and miscarriages that it was more surprising when someone we knew had a child without being consigned to thirty-eight consecutive weeks of bed rest. Turns out God WANTS you to conceive when you’re eighteen years old, apparently so that you can spend your twenties miserable and penniless and living in a camper.”
― Drew Magary, Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood

“For two weeks I existed outside of the universe. And it was lovely.”
― Drew Magary, The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage

“Jokes about butts WORKED.”
― Drew Magary, Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood

“I saw her dying on the screen, and I had to fight the urge to turn it off, because it was just so easy to do that and not deal with it--to let her be some distant problem I didn't have to acknowledge.”
― Drew Magary, The Postmortal

“There was nothing to confront here at this beach: no monsters, no past, no future. Everyone left him alone, the ultimate desire of any middle-aged man. The safety of it all wooed him. Coddled him.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike