John Bergin > John's Quotes

“Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it.
How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages.
...
The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be. Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“The police are asking through the bedroom door, why did I make a batch of strawberry daiquiris before I called them?
Because we were out of raspberries.
Because, can't they see, it just does not matter. Time was not of the essence.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“Fred said, “Man, I think he’s gonna make a fuckin’ suit of human skin, using the best parts from each of us.”
“Holy crap,” said John. “He’ll be gorgeous.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“SHUT UP. Both of you. You're coming with me." To me he said, "Put some pants on."

"Fuck you. This is my house. I make the rules. You take your clothes off. John, get the Twister mat.”
― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders

“Something coming back from the dead was almost always bad news. Movies taught me that. For every one Jesus you get a million zombies.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“But remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.”
― david wong

“I know the Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider can't fly because if it could, it would have a different name entirely. We would call it "sir" because it would be the dominant species on the planet. None of us would leave the house unless a Goliath Fucking Bird-Eating Spider said it was okay”
― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders

“Guys like him, the ones who grip the Bible so tight they leave fingernail grooves, they're the ones who are the most scared of their dark side. Always going too far the other way, fighting for the Lord, often just because it gives them an excuse to fight. ”
― David Wong

“PEOPLE DIE.
This is the fact the world desperately hides from us from birth. Long after you find out the truth about sex and Santa Claus, this other myth endures, this one about how you’ll always get rescued at the last second and if not, your death will at least mean something and there’ll be somebody there to hold your hand and cry over you. All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you’ll die, and you’ll probably be alone.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“John and I have made this stuff our hobby, in the way that an especially attractive prisoner makes a hobby out of not getting raped. Jesus, that’s a terrible analogy. I apologize. What I’m saying is that it’s self-preservation. We didn’t choose this, we just have talents that makes us the equivalent of that new guy in the cell block who has a slim, hairless body and kind of looks like a woman from behind, and has an incredibly realistic tattoo of boobs on his back. He may have no desire at all to ever even touch a penis, but it’s going to happen, even if it’s just in the process of frantically slapping them away. Jesus, am I still talking about this? [John—please delete the above paragraph before it goes off to the publisher].”
― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders

“You don't realize how terrifying the world can be for someone like that, someone who would rather stay in a familiar hole than an unfamiliar mansion.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“He made the engine growl and told the headlights to fuck the night.”
― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders

“One more victim sucked in by John. You get into the room with him and you just fall into a warm pool of beer and video games and penis jokes, staring at the universe with him and saying, "Do you believe this shit?”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“…the whole world [is]a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you’ll die, and you’ll probably be alone.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“Do they know they make the honey for you? Or do they work tirelessly because they think its their own choice?”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“Well, you’d better hope I am because the world was built by sociopaths, men willing to send a million innocent boys into battle to be chopped to screaming giblets, all so a banner can be raised over another piece of land with houses and markets and roads soon after.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“The English language needs a word for that feeling you get when you badly need help, but there is no one you can call because you're not popular enough to have friends, not rich enough to have employees, and not powerful enough to have lackeys. It is a very distinct cocktail of impotence, loneliness and a sudden stark assessment of your non-worth to society? Enturdment?”
― David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Maybe I'll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“I'd like to see you move up to the goat class, where I think you belong.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“You mean old books?"

"Stories written before space travel but about space travel."

"How could there have been stories about space travel before --"

"The writers," Pris said, "made it up.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“At that moment, when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting—do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair. So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think?”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there's twice as much of it. It always gets more and more."

"I see." The girl regarded him uncertainly, not knowing whether to believe him. Not sure if he meant it seriously.

"There's the First Law of Kipple," he said. "'Kipple drives out nonkipple.' Like Gresham's law about bad money. And in these apartments there's been nobody here to fight the kipple."

"So it has taken over completely," the girl finished. She nodded. "Now I understand."

"Your place, here," he said, "this apartment you've picked--it's too kipple-ized to live in. We can roll the kipple-factor back; we can do like I said, raid the other apts. But--" He broke off.

"But what?"

Isidore said, "We can't win."

"Why not?" [...]

"No one can win against kipple," he said, "except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I've sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I'll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It's a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?