Matt Ruff > Quotes

“But stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn’t make them perfect. You try to cherish their virtues and overlook their flaws. The flaws are still there, though. "

"But you don’t get mad. Not like Pop does."

"No, that’s true, I don’t get mad. Not at stories. They do disappoint me sometimes." He looked at the shelves. "Sometimes, they stab me in the heart.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“That’s the horror, the most awful thing: to have a child the world wants to destroy and know that you’re helpless to help him. Nothing worse than that. Nothing worse.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“But stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn't make them perfect. You try to cherish their virtues and overlook their flaws. The flaws are still there, though. But you don't get mad.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“Loosely translated Der schlechte Affe hasst seinen eigenen Geruch means that people are most deeply offended by moral failings that mirror their own.”
― Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys

“A wanderer in darkness, she followed an eccentric orbit, each new disturbance angling her closer to some long-awaited rendezvous. She could only hope that when the moment came, she’d be wise enough to know it, and brave enough to act.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“George sat on his porch, and drank his Coke and made daydreams out of the rain. He wondered about the book he would write this year, and he wondered - not too desperately - whether love would find him at last and let him rest for a time. But he smiled all the while he was thinking about it, because at the core he was happy enough just to be alive and watching the storm, and this one thing made him special.”
― Matt Ruff, Fool on the Hill

“White people in his experience were far more transparent. The most hateful rarely bothered to conceal their hostility, and when for some reason they did try to hide their feelings, they generally exhibited all the guile of five-year-olds, who cannot imagine that the world sees them other than as they wish to be seen.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“What you going to do?" she cried. "You break my neck, and the what? You think I won't come back and haunt you? Go ahead! Make me a ghost! See what that gets you.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“the real reason he’d keep running into monsters was because he was black, and when you’re black in America, there’s always a monster. Sometimes it’s Lovecraftian Elder Gods; sometimes it’s the police, or the Klan, or the Registrar of Voters.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“Atticus tried not to care, telling himself paperbacks were meant to be abused, but it was hard, like watching friends get knocked around.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“...people are most deeply offended by moral failings that mirror their own.”
― Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys

“Ex-Confederate? What’s that, like an ex-Nazi? The man fought for slavery! You don’t get to put an ‘ex-’ in front of that!”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“Oh, what? You’re too smart to believe in ghosts? Flying across the universe, though, that’s logical”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“I’m saying people can be real creative when it comes to ducking responsibility.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“Omnes mundum facimus.”
― Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys

“Well, it all started when I figured out that the janitor at my high school was the Angel of Death…”
― Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys

“...to acknowledge evil, without being consumed by it."
Penny (Mouse), in "Set this House in Order”
― Matt Ruff

“And you never know when a meal will be your last . . . None of us do.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“Hi," I said. "I'm the last of the Brontë sisters.”
― Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys

“Something else that puzzles me about other people is that a lot of them don’t know their purpose in life. This usually does bother them—more than not being able to remember being born, anyway—but I can’t even imagine it. Part of knowing who I am is knowing why I am, and I’ve always known who I am, from the first moment.”
― Matt Ruff, Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls

“Warren Dandridge had insisted that poker was a Christian game: Players who practiced virtue-- learning and respecting the odds, keeping their emotions in check, managing their bankrolls intelligently-- tended to prosper, while those who succumbed to vice-- chasing long shots, letting passion rule reason-- went the way of all unrepentant sinners.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“April, she had died. April could still be a very cold month in Ithaca, though it was certainly not the best month for dying of exposure. A depressed person would have a better bet walking along the edge of one of the gorges and “accidentally” falling in. Of course the man Jessop had done neither; hand-making his daughter’s tombstone had probably kept him too occupied to even consider suicide. Yes. That was it; that was the key. An act of creation in the face of loss.”
― Matt Ruff, Fool on the Hill: A Novel

“White folks' belief that Negroes were magically gifted struck her as the most absurd form of superstition. Sorcery was in the Bible, which meant it was real, but to Momma it was self-evident that like every other kind of power it would be concentrated in the hands of the mighty.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“For those wishing to vacation abroad, the agency could recommend destinations that were relatively free of local race prejudice and, just as important, not overrun by white American tourists—for nothing was more frustrating than traveling thousands of miles only to encounter the same bigots you dealt with every day at home.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“It never fails,” Montrose said. “No matter what they do to you, afterwards it’s like nothing happened. You’re supposed to just be grateful you’re still breathing.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“dude — A passive-aggressive euphemism for “motherfucker.” —The New Devil’s Dictionary”
― Matt Ruff, 88 Names

“Montrose could have simply forbidden him to read such things. Atticus knew other sons whose fathers had done that, who’d thrown their comic books and Amazing Stories collections into the trash. But Montrose, with limited exceptions, didn’t believe in book-banning. He always insisted he just wanted Atticus to think about what he read, rather than imbibing it mindlessly, and Atticus, if he were being honest, had to admit that was a reasonable goal.”
― Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country

“It was perfect. I mean . . . not that anything really happened.” “Oh, George, it’s not how much you do, it’s what you feel while you’re doing it. You know that. But do you know the real truth?” “No, What?” “The real truth is that whoever you love will be just like me, and not just in the fog. Understand?” “No.” “You will”
― Matt Ruff, Fool on the Hill: A Novel

“Tja, angefangen hat das alles, als ich eines Tages darauf gekommen bin, dass der Hausmeister meiner Highschool der Würgengel war …”
― Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys

“Are you the government?"
He seemed surprised by the question. "Does the government fight evil?"
I thought about it. For some reason, the first thing that came to mind wasn't the FBI or the justice system, but my last trip to the DMV. "Well," I said, "it can."
"Lots of things can fight evil," True replied. "Cinderblocks, for example--if a Cinderblock had fallen in Josef Stalin's crib, the twentieth century might have been a bit more pleasant.(...)”
― Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys