Richard Bachman > Quotes

“The longer you went without speaking, the harder it gets to break the silence.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Lunacy is when you can’t see the seams where they stitched the world together anymore.”
― Stephen King as Richard Bachman, Rage

“Then you can blame it on your parents,' I said, smiling. 'Won't that be a relief?”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“If people just took it a day at a time, they’d be a lot happier.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“He touched McVries’s shoulders, setting him straight again. McVries looked up at him sleepily and smiled. “No, Ray. It’s time to sit down.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“None of us really has anything to lose. That makes it easier to give away.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Craziness is only a matter of degree, and there are lots of people besides me who have the urge to roll heads. They go to stock-car races and the horror movies and the wrestling matches they have in Portland Expo. Maybe what she said smacked of all those things, but I admired her for saying out loud, all the same--the price of honesty is always high. She had an admirable grasp of the fundamentals. Besides, she was tiny and pretty.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing.”
― Richard Bachman, Thinner

“If there is an after, I hope it's not dark. And I hope you can remember. I'd hate to wander around in the dark forever, not knowing who I was or what I was doin' here, or not even knowing that I'd ever had anything different.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Love is a fake!” Olson was blaring. “There are three great truths in the world and they are a good meal, a good screw, and a good shit, and that’s all!”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“All places are the same unless your mind changes. There’s no magic place to get your mind right. If you feel like shit, everything you see looks like shit.”
― Richard Bachman, Roadwork

“The reason all of this is so horrible,” McVries said, “is because it’s just trivial. You know? We’ve sold ourselves and traded our souls on trivialities.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.”
― Richard Bachman, Blaze

“Crowd was to be pleased. Crowd was to be worshipped and feared. Ultimately, Crowd was to be made sacrifice unto.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Just go on dancing with me like this forever, Garraty, and I'll never tire. We'll scrape our shoes on the stars and hang upside down from the moon.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Another time, another place.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Because if you don't have someone to run out of town once in a while, how are you going to know you yourself belong there?”
― Richard Bachman, Thinner

“Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. But I didn't hold it against him. To err is only human, but it's divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“You were starting to sound a little like a Stephen King novel for a while there,”
― Richard Bachman, Thinner

“The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“To hell with you. You just don't want to admit it. Those people, they're animals. They want to see someone's brains on the road, that's why they turn out. They'd just as soon see yours."
"That isn't the point," McVries said calmly. "Didn't you say you went to see the Long Walk when you were younger?"
"Yes, when I didn't know any better!"
"Well, that makes it okay, doesn't it?" McVries uttered a short, ugly-sounding laugh. "Sure they're animals. You think you just found out a new principle? Sometimes I wonder just how naive you really are. The French lords and ladies used to screw after the guillotinings. The old Romans used to stuff each other during the gladiatorial matches. That's entertainment, Garraty. It's nothing new." He laughed againd. Garraty stared at him, fascinated.
[...]
"Death is great for the appetites," McVries said. [...] "But even that's not the real point of this little expedition, Garraty. The point is, they're the smart ones. They're not getting thrown to the lions. They're not staggering along and hoping they won't have to take a shit with two warnings against them. You're dumb, Garraty. You and me and Pearson and Barkovitch and Stebbins, we're all dumb. Scramm's dumb because he thinks he understands and he doesn't. Olson's dumb because he understood too much too late. They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?"
He paused, badly out of breath.
[...]
"Then why are you doing it? Garraty asked him. "If you know that much, and if you're that sure, why are you doing it?"
"The same reason we're all doing it," Stebbins said. He smiled gently, almost lovingly. His lips were a little sun-parched; otherwise, his face was still unlined and seemingly invincible. "We want to die, that's why we're doing it. Why else, Garraty? Why else?”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“You can’t always understand something just because you did it.”
― Richard Bachman, Roadwork

“I feel that if I’m going through this hellish decline, you should be going through one also . . . misery loves company, and I guess we’ve all got a streak of one hundred percent gold-plated bastard in our natures, tangled up so tightly with the good part of us that we can never get free of it.”
― Richard Bachman, Thinner

“Being someone's responsibility makes them hate you.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“They walked on, somehow in step, although all three of them were bent forever in different shapes by the pains that pulled them.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“He watched his feet, the only things that were keeping him from finding out if there really was a Kingdom of Heaven or not.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“Garraty thought that memories were like a line drawn in the dirt. The further back you went the scuffier and harder to see that line got. Until finally there was nothing but smooth sand and the black hole of nothingness that you came out of.”
― Richard Bachman, The Long Walk

“He was going to make this happen. His feet and his head was set, and when he got that way, he always did what he said he was going to do. It was his pride. The only one he had.”
― Richard Bachman, Blaze

“That was Dad's life, and I was the birdshit on his windshield.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“Now the only way out is straight up to Heaven.”
― Richard Bachman