Clay McLeod Chapman > Quotes

“I am the house. Every room is a chamber of my heart, every hallway an artery, every beam a bone.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“Other animals sense danger and the need for self-preservation, but we’re the only ones who know death is coming. We know it’s there, always there, just waiting for us.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“and”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“Did you know humans are the only creatures alive that know about death?”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“You're holding on to your humanity like it's the last bread crumbs left to eat before starvation sweeps through. You cling to these concepts of compassion and empathy and goodwill, but they're all slipping through your fingers, they are burning up before your very eyes.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Nobody under the age of forty was on Facebook anymore. That was where all the dinosaurs socialized.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Before the nearest cell tower seared its insidious electrical tentacles into her skull and she could no longer think for herself.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“I'm crying because I have nothing...nothing left for you.'
This made the witness very sad. He didn't want to be left out, so he began to cry, too.
'Wait', the gray boy said. 'For you, my brightest disciple, I have something special. I give all I have left...' The gray boy slipped his fingers through his ribs and tore out a piece of his heart and offered it to the witness. 'Take and eat, for this is my body' he said. The witness remarked that it tasted like Wonder Bread soaked in the juices of deiced Del Monte vegetables with just a pinch of sugar. He never felt happier in all his life. Now he belonged.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Whisper Down the Lane

“This is not a zombie outbreak. Get all those goddamn movies out of your mind. This is not an infection. It is not viral. Not in a COVID cough-cough kind of way. This is like some…some…I don’t know. Some sort of social plague.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Your body is a temple. A ripe vessel. We want to make sure that it’s ready for receiving. “Receiving…what?” A gift, gurl. The juice cleanse was step one in Devon’s spiritual awakening. YOGAMAMA insisted she scrub the plumbing. You gotta purge yourself of any toxins polluting your body, hon. Flush—it—all—out! Make your vessel pure again. Then—and only then—can we welcome in the Wellness.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Anderson Cooper made him feel stupid. Fax didn’t make him feel stupid. Fax just made him feel.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“What is a ghost? Is it a shadow of our past clinging to our present? I believe it’s our addictions. The habits we form that end up consuming us if we allow them to take over.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“and there I was, caught in the crossfire, aware of how loud a house could be in the absence of sound.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“You men always try to tell our story. You men always get it wrong.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, The Remaking

“I could barely feel my arms anymore, they were so sore. Picking up anything at this point, a pencil or a fork, would send a jolt of pain through my joints. It felt like they might pop right out from their sockets. If one of us wasn’t holding you, cradling you, you’d wail away and never stop. It reached the point where I had to push the sound of you out of my head.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, What Kind of Mother

“So dark. No light. No air!”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Bodies of Work

“The following books proved invaluable in the research and inspiration for this novel: The Dictionary of Demons by M. Belanger. United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists by Peter Bergen. Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon by Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko. We Need to Do Something by Max Booth III. The Bewdley Mayhem Omnibus by Tony Burgess. Pontypool (the play) by Tony Burgess. The Violence by Delilah Dawson. And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin. The Passage by Justin Cronin. Dark Persuasion: A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media by Joel E. Dimsdale. Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America by Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss, and Brian Friedberg. In the Skin of a Jihadist by Anna Erelle. A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans. Domestic Darkness: An Insider’s Account of the January 6th Insurrection, and the Future of Right-Wing Extremism by Julie Farnam. Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi. Come Closer by Sara Gran. Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory. Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale. All These Subtle Deceits by C. S. Humble. The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenny. Cell by Stephen King. Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein. The Night Guest by Hildur Knutsdottir, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal. “Hyphae” by John Langan, featured in the anthology Fungi. The Many Hauntings of the Manning Family by Lorien Lawrence. The Penguin Book of Exorcisms, edited by Joseph P. Laycock. Spirit Possession Around the World, edited by Joseph P. Laycock. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay. Daphne and Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman. Demon Possession: A Medical, Historical, Anthropological, and Theological Symposium, edited by John Warwick Montgomery. The Demonism of the Ages, Spirit Obsessions, Oriental and Occidental Occultism by J. M. Peebles. American Girls: One Woman’s Journey into the Islamic State and Her Sister’s Fight to Bring Her Home by Jessica Roy. Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt. Deliver Us from Evil: A New York City Cop Investigates the Supernatural by Ralph Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool. A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic and Respect by Mick West.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“We have always been a suggestible culture. We love trends. We love to belong. It doesn’t take much to get people panicking. If one person goes crazy, spouting off about lord-knows-what, guess what? I want to lose my mind, too. It’s the new jam.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“The soldiers rummaged through the guts every girl and boy before bringing out their bowels, decorating the surrounding trees with the child's insides.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Bodies of Work

“There’s no escaping your own haunted house.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“There is no light at the end of the tunnel. No angels singing. No pearly gates. There is only this life. Once it’s gone, our only hope for the afterlife is that our memories remain in the hearts of those still living. Those are the vessels we inhabit.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“The past is never quite through with us, is it?”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“Trust the source. Verify. Verify. Verify. If your news only comes from one outlet, and they’re the only ones reporting it, well, then…chances are it’s not true. News doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It lives and breathes and…spreads. Other outlets will catch it. Pick it up. Cover it. But it’s got to start somewhere. Begin somewhere.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“No more dosing. That’s a promise. I, Erin Hill, do solemnly swear to go cold turkey. I’ll stay the night in my old bedroom and head out in the morning. I just want to get— haunted —some rest.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“This forced detox feels like an exorcism. They keep me bound to my bed and all I want is to break free, but they won’t let me go until I’m clean.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“I CALL— His brain stem was about to snap. —UPON THEE— Just as an aneurysm threatened to burst in his brain, seconds away from blacking out… —RIIIIIIISE! There they were. Over his nose. Across his cheeks. Every last pore throughout his face yawned open and out wriggled the oily worms, curling and flickering and shimmying free. He summoned them, all pale and slippery, from his skin—Rise! Rise! RISE! At least it was fun to pretend he could. In Caleb’s world, he had the power to beckon his whiteheads. Make them rise, rise, RISE! What power. What utter control Caleb was capable of. RISE, WHITEHEADS, RISE!”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“can feel my eyeballs swelling and popping out of my skull, floating into the air like balloons tethered to my body by optic nerves.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“Fax News Brain. It’s spreading. It’s communicable. Mad cow disease for conservatives.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Growing. I can’t stop repeating it: There are mushrooms growing inside my body. How does someone—how can anyone—survive that?”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Ghost Eaters

“The exact same spot where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech…The very same location where the AIDS quilt covered the landscape… They’re all fucking on it.”
― Clay McLeod Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes