Christopher moore quotes

...as if someone had thrown a hand grenade into the middle of a teddy bear orgy and the only survivors had had their fur blown off.

Hope is merely another face of desire.

Action based on hope just felt better than the paralysis of certainty.

Chapter 8, Dinner With the Vampire: Is there something wrong with your food?" No, I'm just not very hungry." You're going to break my heart, aren't you?

You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't.

Sometimes this high-tech world calls for low-tech solutions.

That's a horrible plan." "Yes, but I have chosen to ignore that.

You sure about this writer thing son?

Stephenie Meyer: Her vampires are sparkly, which I think we can all agree is wrong.

They want to be tied up, I tie them up. They want to be spanked, I spank them. They want to be called names, I call them names. But try and drink a little of their blood, and they scream like babies. What about my needs?

After all the evidence is in--after you've run all the facts by everything you know--and you're still lost, you have to do some things on faith.

Last time I really got to know myself it turned out there was a whole gang of bitches in there to deal with. I felt like the receptionist at a rehab center. They all had nice tits though, I gotta say.

That's the scary thing about hope," she said. "If you let it go too long it turns into faith.

It's wildly irritating to have invented something as revolutionary as sarcasm, only to have it abused by amateurs.

Yo, yo, yo, check it out," said PJ, with enough hand gestures that any deaf person watching would have thought he had ASL Tourette's syndrome

Life is messy. Would that every puzzle piece fell into place, every word was kind, every accident happy, but such is not the case. Life is messy

He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words. That's what he taught me. Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell. That was his gift.

Faith isn't an act of intelligence, it's an act of imagination.

If you like what you're reading, I probably wrote it.

Everyone is happier if they have someone else to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both.

Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It's the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates.

She knew it should bother her more, being evil and all, but after she put on a little mascara and some lipstick and poured herself another cup of blood-laced coffee, she found that she was okay with it.

I was seven before I realized that you could eat breakfast with your pants on.

The prospect of change is a many-fanged beast, my dear.

The Angel Gabriel disappeared once for sixty years and they found him on earth hiding in the body of a man named Miles Davis.

As much as I encourage communication with my readers, I don't want reviews from them, simply because I don't need to be hamstrung in the middle of working on something.

Why understand when you can believe?

There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.

I've got to think that that was unethical," Joshua said. "Josh, faking demonic possession is like a mustard seed." "How is it like a mustard seed?" "You don't know, do you? Doesn't seem at all like a mustard seed, does it? Now you see how we all feel when you liken things unto a mustard seed? Huh?

Pondering is a little like considering and a little like thinking, but looser. To ponder, one must let the facts roll around the rim of the mind's roulette wheel, coming to settle in whichever slot they feed pulled to.

Not unlike the toaster, I control darkness.

He wanted her to experience all the glorious cheese of life.

Regardless of its purpose, the humpback-whale song is the most complex piece of nonhuman composition on earth. Whether it's art, prayer, or booty call, the humpback song is an amazing thing to experience firsthand, and I suspect that even once the science of it is put to bed, it will remain, as long as they sing, magic.

She hugged me and I could feel the heat rise in my face, either from shame or love, like there was a difference.

Theophilus Crowe's mobile phone played eight bars of "Tangled Up in Blue" in an irritating electronic voice that sounded like a choir of suffering houseflies, or Jiminy Cricket huffing helium, or, well, you know, Bob Dylan.

He had risked his freedom and his pride to buy her this, to acknowledge that part of her that everyone else seemed to want to get rid of.

Routine feeds the illusion of safety.

When I teach seminars, I tell people, Your stuff has to look like something thats out there, because otherwise nobody will take a chance on you.

She doesn't understand that a writer is a special creature--that I'm different from everyone else. I'm not saying I'm superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess.

. . . You seem upset, Charlie. Is something wrong? Charlie: No, no, I’m okay, I just had to take directions from a mute beaver in a fez to get here, it’s unsettling.

The Winter Woman is as wild as a blizzard, as fresh as new snow. While some see her as cold, she has a fiery heart under that ice-queen exterior. She likes the stark simplicity of Japanese art and the daring complexity of Russian literature. She prefers sharp to flowing lines, brooding to pouting, and rock and roll to country and western. Her drink is vodka, her car is German, her analgesic is Advil. The Winter Woman likes her men weak and her coffee strong. She is prone to anemia, hysteria, and suicide.

Enchantment and seduction were fine means of persuasion, but when time is short, an awkward but quick concussion could better serve a girl's purpose.

Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell

Turtles hate heights. They don't even like being a few feet off the ground. It's the main reason they have resisted evolution for so long-fear of heights. Turtle thinking goes thus: Sure, first our scales turn into feathers and the next thing you know we're flying and chirping and perching on trees. We've seen it happen. Thanks, but we're staying right here in the mud where we belong. You're not going to see us flying full-tilt boogie into a sliding glass door.

Like looking down on a lubricious chess set, isn't it? The king moves in tiny steps, with no direction, like a drunkard trying to avoid the archer's bolt. The others work their strategies and wait for the old man to fall. He has no power, yet all power moves in his orbit and to his mad whim. Do you know there's no fool piece on the chessboard, Kent?" "Methinks the fool is the player, the mind above the moves.

They were told what they wanted and they believed it. They can only keep their dream alive by being with others like themselves who will mirror their illusions.

In fact, he sorely hoped that it would happen, because otherwise, the world made no sense, there was no justice, and life was just a tangled ball of chaos.

For me, 'Lamb' started out as a further exploration of the phenomenon of faith and the responsibility of a messiah that I touched on in 'Coyote Blue' and 'Island of the Sequined Love Nun,' but it ended up being an exploration of the true meaning of sacrifice, loyalty, and friendship.

Blessed are the dumbfucks.

A woman’s magazine quiz: Question: You decide to do the dread deed and just as things are starting to get hot he comes, rolls over, and asks, “Was it good for you?” You: a. Say, “God, yes! That was the best seventeen seconds of my life” b. Say, “Sure, as good as it gets for me with a man.” c. Put a Certs in your navel and say, “That’s for you, Mr. Bunnyman. You can have it on your way back up, after the job is finished

If you think anyone is sane you just don’t know enough about them. The key — and this is very relevant in our case — is to find someone whose insanity dovetails with your own.

She was an alien, really - a sort of eating, pooping, tantrum machine - and he didn't understand anything about her species.

Sarcasm will make your tits fall off.

She's evil. Evil, evil, evil. I want to see her naked.

All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid.

Life is loneliness, broken only by the gods taunting us with friendship and the odd bonk

It's like time travel only, you know, slower.

If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them.

From Dickens's cockneys to Salinger's phonies, from Kerouac's beatniks to Cheech and Chong's freaks, and on to hip hop's homies, dialect has always been used as a way for generations to distinguish themselves.

Well they're pissed off and they're hungry. I was kind of busy trying not to get my brains eaten. They seemed pretty adamant about the brain-eating thing. Then they're going to IKEA, I guess

Canada is a myth people made up to entertain children, like the Tooth Fairy. There’s no such place.

People, generally, suck.

I've won Satan's lottery.

Little-boy love...the cleanest pain I've ever known. Love without desire, conditions, or limits - a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go? Why, in all their experiments, did the Magi never try to capture that purity in a bottle? Perhaps they couldn't.

You want me and I want you. right?" Who did she think she was? You can't just go around blurting out the truth like a prophet with Tourette's Syndrome. He said, "Well, I guess. Yeah, that's right.

One of them hissed-not the hiss of a cat, a long, steady tone-more like the hiss of air escaping the rubber raft that is all that lies between you and a dark sea full of sharks, the hiss of your life leaking out at the seams.

Compliment but do not covet.

The pursuit of material gain is ultimately empty when measured against eternity.

Hope is bulletproof, truth just hard to hit

We know there's going to be nothing but pain, but we go back again and again.

Unless you can change the past, you’re wasting the present on this guilt

Oh, I would while away the hours, Wanking in the flowers, my heart all full of song, I'd be gliding all the lilies as I waved about my willie, If I only had a schlong.

And an inky-colored despair of rejection enveloped me like the black tortilla of depression around a pain burrito.

Sweetheart, wake up; you've destroyed the house and I need you to suffer for it.

In business, as in politics, the public is ever so tolerant of those who slime.

As a teacher of fourth-graders in a public school, where corporal punishement was not allowed, she had years of violence stored up and was, truth be told, sort of enjoying letting it out on Kona, who she felt could have been the poster child for the failure of public education.

Advice, then, young yeoman: When referring to the king's middle daughter, state that she is fair, speculate that she is pious, but unless you'd like to spend your watch looking for the box where your head is kept, resist the urge to wax ignorant on her naughty bits." -Pocket I don't know what that means, sir." -Yeoman Speak not of Regan's shaggacity, son" [...] -Pocket

He always had a problem with the purity of others. Never his own.

What is your name?" asked Lear. Caius," said Kent. And whence do you hail?" From Bonking, sire." Well, yes, lad, as do we all," said Lear, "but from what town?

Do we look like thrill-seekers? Wasn't it enough that we had to put up that sign reading NO HABLA ESPANOL and acknowledge the existence of thirty percent of the population, even in the negative?

Even a mentally challenged shark would figure out that sea turtles did not wear boxer shorts printed in flying piggies, and no sea turtle would be yattering streams of obscenities between chain-smoker gasps of breath.

Tommy moved on. "Lash, your people have been oppressed for hundreds of years. It's time to strike back. Look, you don't have your MBA yet - they haven't completely juiced you of your usefulness yet. Would Martin Luther King back down from this challenge? Malcolm X? James Brown? Don't you have a dream? Don't you feel good, like you knew that you would, now?

Only cops and vampires have to have an invitation to enter.

Science, you don't know, looks like magic.

I know that even now, having watched enough television, you probably won't even refer to them as lepers so as to spare their feelings. You probably call them 'parts-dropping-off challenged' or something.

He invented Kung Fu when translated to English means method by which short, bald guys can kick the bejeezus out of you.

You're going to break my heart, aren't you?

Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair.

The value of the work we do is the value we give to it.

He was a writer and words were his weapons.

I love you above all things, even pie.

I wanted a trumpet concerto that reflected Native American music because, well, there aren't any. I looked around for one but couldn't find anything. So it's a wide-open field.

Normally if I met a guy who was unemployed and illiterate who hadn't bathed in a couple of weeks, I'd be standing in a puddle with excitement, but I'm sort of in a bad mood tonight, so take this bag and give me the fu**ing paper before I pop your head like a zit. He said, you're a lesbian, aren't you?

Foul and magical fumes bubbled out of the kettle, like the flatulence of a dragon on a demon-only diet.

People always stay the age that they died at. My big brother died of leukemia when I was six. He was eight. Now when I think of him, he's always eight, and he's still my big brother. He never changes, and the part of me that remembers him never changes.

An adventure story is fear recalled in comfort.

She's so small, yet she contains so much evil.

Like God's own chocolate, I'd lick her shadow off a hot sidewalk

[in reference to turkey bowling] He [Tommy] squinted and picked his target, then took his steps and sent the bird sliding down the aisle. A collective gasp rose from the crew as the fourteen-pound, self-basting, fresh-frozen projectile of wholesome savory goodness plowed into the soap bottles like a freight train into a chorus line of drunken grandmothers.

Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.

I think there was always some scrawny dreamer sitting at the edge of the firelight, who had the ability to imagine dangers, to look into the future in his imagination and see possibilities, and therefore survived to pass his genes on to the next generation.

Boredom can be a lethal thing on a small island.

Abby: I could be a slave to your darkest desires. I can do things. Anything you want. Tommy: Well, that's terrific, because we have a lot of laundry piled up and the apartment is a wreck. Abby: Anything you desire, my lord. I can do laundry, clean, bring you small creatures to quench your thirst until I am worthy.

Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-Tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won't break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon.

Nobody's perfect... Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him.

You don't hurry a thinker, and you don't talk to him when he's thinking. It's just inconsiderate.

The fact that 'A Dirty Job' has comedy and supernatural horror in it, that both are woven in and out of it with a whimsical tone, despite the fact that it's about death, makes it hard to characterize with standard genre labels - but I have no problem with that. I'd call it a funny story about death, and leave it at that.

... but to remain historically accurate, I would have had to leave out an important question that I felt needed to be addressed, which is, 'What if Jesus had known kung fu?

Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.

Words, words, words, a million million words circle in my head like hawks, waiting to dive onto the page to rend and tear the only two words I want to write. Why me?

Children see magic because they look for it.

San Francisco is a breathtakingly beautiful city, with lots of great contrasts between dark and light, often overlapping each other. It's a great setting for a horror story.

The netherworld is timeless and unchanging, and boring -- much like a doctor's waiting room.

Don't bruise the Foo!

I could stand on my head and flick the bean right there at the dinner table and my mom would be all, "Honey, Christmas is family time, we should be together" and make me finish in front of everyone.

And I'll have you know that if you hurt my son again, if he so much as sighs sadly over his coffee, I will hire a man, a Russian, probably, to hunt you down and rip all that shiny black hair from your head, then break your skinny arms and legs, and set you on fire, and then put you out with a hammer. And should there be children from your beastly rutting, I shall have the Russian man cut them to tiny pieces and feed them to Madame Jacob's dog. because, although he may be only a worthless, simpleminded, libertine artist, Lucien is my favorite, and I will not have him hurt. Do you understand?

Oh, I get it," I said. "It's a parable. Cute. Let's go eat.

Do we still have to floss?" Tommy asked. "I mean, what's the point of being immortal if we have to floss?

Blessed are the meek, for to them we shall say "attaboy".

Perhaps there is a reason that there is no fool piece on the chessboard. What action, a fool? What strategy, a fool? What use, a fool? Ah, but a fool resides in a deck of cards, a joker, sometimes two. Of no worth, of course. No real purpose. The appearance of a trump, but none of the power: Simply an instrument of chance. Only a dealer may give value to the joker.

If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it. If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil. If you seek an adventure, may this song sing you away to blissful escape. If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions. All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not. May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them. May you find perfection, and know it by name.

One can't be free without action.

Love: the sickest of Irony’s sick jokes. The place where logic and order go to die.

Love needs room to grow. Like a rose. Or a tumor.

I think I'm what they call a never-was.