Mike Carey > Quotes

“Yahweh: You've been unhappy because you've desired things that cannot be.

Lucifer: That's what desire IS. The need for what we can't have. The need for what's readily available is called greed.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 11: Evensong

“We make our own monsters, then fear them for what they show us about ourselves.”
― Mike Carey & Peter Gross, The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

“They used to call the devil the father of lies. But for someone whose sin is meant to be pride, you'd think that lying would leave something of a sour taste. So my theory is that when the devil wants to get something out of you, he doesn't lie at all. He tells you the exact, literal truth. And he lets you find your own way to hell.”
― Mike Carey

“Michael: There's nothing here to fear.
Lucifer: Well, there's always the truth.”
― Mike Carey

“All stories are lies. But good stories are lies made from light and fire. And they lift our hearts out of the dust, and out of the grave.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 11: Evensong

“No, there are no special places in hell. Hell is a democracy.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 2: Children and Monsters

“That's what I've never been able to get about religion: that charmless combination of altruism and insanity. Give me a cynical, self-interested bastard any day of the week; at least you can play chicken with him and know he'll stick to the rules.”
― Mike Carey, Vicious Circle

“I took a strong dislike to him right then to save time and effort later.”
― Mike Carey, The Devil You Know

“Those heart-hammering nightmares that start to lose coherence even as you're waking up from them, but that still manage to leave their moldering fingerprints all across your day.”
― Mike Carey, The Naming of the Beasts

“I have stared into the light and you are all my shadows.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 5: Inferno

“Elaine: He saved my life twice. He's the only grown-up I know who keeps his promises.

Michael: Yes. It is a point of pride with him. But please — don't mistake it for a virtue.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 2: Children and Monsters

“You read any Greek myths, puppy? The one about the gorgon Medusa, particularly? I used to wonder what could be so terrible that you couldn't survive even looking at it.

Until I got a little older and I figured out the obvious answer.

Everything.”
― Mike Carey & Peter Gross, The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

“When a book is read an irrevocable thing happens — a murder, followed by an imposture. The story in the mind murders the story on the page, and takes its place.”
― Mike Carey, The Unwritten. [Volume 2], Inside Man

“Words are the birds that break cover and show your enemy where you're hiding.”
― Mike Carey, Vicious Circle

“When God has abandoned you and the devil is snapping at your heels, what you really need on your side is a bigger devil.”
― Mike Carey, The Naming of the Beasts

“Be yourself, until you bleed.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 11: Evensong

“You use the word "Infinity" very glibly.... Have you ever been there? Time and space are extensions of the mind, the will. Which means that infinity is a purely local phenomenon. You can turn over a stone and find it crawling there. Or you can make it yourself out of whatever materials are at hand.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 3: A Dalliance With the Damned

“All the waters in the oceans won't fill a bucket with a hole in it”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 1: Devil in the Gateway

“Nothing is immune to Time. Not even eternity.”
― Mike Carey, The Sandman Presents: The Furies

“It does no good to run. And it does no good to hide. But I know what it's like. Your brain shuts down, and you follow your instincts. Or, at least, you think you do. But you know what you're really doing? When you flee through the night, or crawl into your little bolt-hole? You know what's really guiding you? Controlling you? Pushing you on? Genre conventions.”
― Mike Carey & Peter Gross, The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity

“The world seems to work in predictable ways, and you think you see the pattern. But that's fatal. Because it's only a pattern until you meet the first event that doesn't fit. And by then it's too late. By then, all the tricks you've learned to deal with the world -- well, they just don't work anymore.”
― Mike Carey, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere

“It wasn't what I was expecting, but like I've always said: if life gives you lemmings, jump off a cliff.”
― Mike Carey, The Devil You Know

“It's not a holiday until you overdo it!”
― Mike Carey, Hellblazer: All His Engines

“It was a hot, moist armpit of a night...”
― Mike Carey, The Naming of the Beasts

“You know what pulp is, Mr. Tallis? It's the flesh of a luscious fruit, mashed down into an incredible, half liquid richness. so saturated with flavor that it fills your whole body, not just your mouth.”
― Mike Carey & Peter Gross, The Unwritten, Vol. 5: On to Genesis

“And send not to ask for whom the fucking bell tolls, because you're not going to like the answer.”
― Mike Carey, Vicious Circle

“On into the void he flies, unafraid. There is nothing in mere absence that can cow him. Or loneliness. Or the lack of maps and charts. For he is his own path. And he sees by his own light. We watch him from a great distance. From a vantage point no less subjective, no less absolute. And so it's hard to tell whether he imposes himself on the emptiness, or becomes it.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 11: Evensong

“Could it hurt to take a look? The answer was yes, of course. It's always yes. But I went anyway.”
― Mike Carey, Thicker Than Water

“The world is a book. Some words stand out from the page.”
― Mike Carey, Lucifer, Vol. 1: Devil in the Gateway

“The light of a hunter's moon bleached the unresisting pastels from the faces of the towers, so that they looked like titanic ribs of bone, and shadows accrued like crusted blood under the walkways.”
― Mike Carey, Thicker Than Water