Jonathan Maberry

“This one looks good,” said Chong over breakfast the next morning. Benny read out loud from the paper. “‘Pit Thrower.’ What’s that?” “I don’t know,” Chong said with a mouth full of toast. “I think it has something to do with barbecuing.” It didn’t.”

“They held each other and wept as the night closed its fist around their tiny shelter, and the world below them seethed with killers both living and dead.”

“Suffering is easier to endure when shared.”

“Chong said, 'Do yourself a favor, Morg. Next time you're staring at a girl's boobs, look up. You'll be shocked to learn it, but there's going to be a face up there. Nose, mouth, eyes. And behind the eyes is an actual person.”

“Reporters trade in pain. It sells papers. Everyone knows that.”

“She looked like a character from a video game. One of those improbably busty, impossibly well-armed superchicks who could do acrobatics and hit the kill zone even while firing guns from both hands during a cartwheel. "You look fucking ridiculous," she told herself.”

“No matter what choice you make, it doesn't define you. Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later; just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we make lasts our whole life. If there's ever a choice you've made that you no longer agree with, you can make another choice.”

“A wise man once said that we can't make anyone feel or do anything. We can throw things into the wind, but it's up to each person to decide how they want to react, where they want to stand when things fall.”

“...but it was death that changed. People are still people. Some good, some bad. Death changed, and we don't know what death really means anymore. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this is an object lesson about the arrogance of our assumptions. Hard to say. But the world? She didn't change. She healed. We stopped hurting her and she began to heal. You can see it all around. The whole world is a forest now. The air is fresher. More trees, more oxygen.”

“Revenge is an infection of the spirit.”

“Everyone carries around his own monsters.---Richard Pryor”

“Sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage.”

“Generosity could be as contagious as the zombie plague as long as enough people were willing to be carriers.”

“Walls, towns, rules, and day-to-day life doesn't make us civilized ... That's organization and ritual. Civilization lives in our hearts and heads or it doesn't exist at all.”

“We're each alone inside our heads, some more so than others.”

“It's important to know the past, but your survival depends on knowing the present.”

“Often it was the most unlikely people who found within themselves a spark of something greater. It was probably always there, but most people are never tested, and they go through their whole lives without ever knowing that when things are at their worst, they are at their best.”

“Sometimes people say terrible things when they're scared. They don't mean to, but they can't help it. They lash out because if they can see that their words hurt someone else, it makes them feel as if they aren't completely powerless.”

“A bite will still hurt, but it won't kill you.”

“It’s easier to be a character in a story than the star of your own tragedy.”

“Closure isn't closure until someone's ready to close the door.”

“Nix still held Benny's hand, and her grip tightened to an almost crushing force, grinding his hand bones together. It hurt, but Benny would rather have cut that hand off than take it back at that moment. If it would help Nix through this, he'd give her a pair of pliers and a vise so she could do a proper job.”

“Newton screamed when he felt them begin to crawl over his scrotum and try to wiggle between his buttocks”

“If it rushed he'd slash. Stabbing is a fool's move, the blade gets caught. Ben knew that quick slashes could fend off even a big hound or a boar.”

“When Tony lost it, it would be up to Ruger to take Lady Death by the tits and giver a good tweak. That's how he saw it. Give Lady Death's tits a good tweak.”

“We had the whole 'when you assume you make an ass out of you and me' speech in school.”

“They won the war but lost the peace,”

“When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there's nothing wrong with my skills.”

“I’m not sure I could trust a man who would bypass an Oreo in favor of vanilla wafers. It’s a fundamental character flaw, possibly a sign of true evil.”

“There was a sliver of moon and a splash of stars, and the light outlined her face and glistened on the tears that ran like mercury down her cheeks.”

“There are moments that define a person's whole life. Moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are moments ungoverned by happenstance, untroubled by luck. These are the moments in which a person earns the right to live, or not.”

“Apple of My Eye is a twisted collection of short stories by Amy Grech, including the sexy and deadly title story that makes you want to stay home with the door locked and the lights on. Grech's stories are sinister, sneaky, convoluted and dangerous—and absolutely not to be missed!”— Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author ofGhost Road Blues and Dead Man's Song”