Mira Grant

“Why is it you assholes always feel the need to tell the media your evil plans before you kill us?” asked Becks. “Is it a union requirement or something?”

“…and Dave and I, we were doing this…this weird circling thing, like we needed to figure out every single line of the script before we could even start the movie. I knew, and he knew, and we didn’t do a damn thing about it…It’s like we thought everything had to be perfect, or it wouldn’t work. Like it was a story.”

“I am, in fact, immortal when annoyed.”

“I was still wearing my shoes. The staff was paid to wash the sheets after every visit, and by the point we left the field, I’d dressed and undressed so many times in the course of decontamination that I never wanted to remove my clothes again. I’d just wear them until they dissolved, and then spend the rest of my life naked.”

“There is nothing so patient, in this world or any other, as a virus searching for a host.”

“Nothing is impossible to kill. It's just that sometimes after you kill something you have to keep shooting it until it stops moving”

“You can't win. Logic has no power over her when her territory has been invaded by heathens.”

“I have to find the heart of every subject as fast as I can, pin it down on the page, and then cut it wide open for the audience to see.”

“Failure to die is always appreciated.”

“See, Berkeley has always drawn the nuts and flakes of the academic world. That's what happens when you have a university that offers degrees in both computer science and parapsychology.”

“Of course, if we were lucky, we wouldn't be getting chased by an army of zombies through the quarantine area that used to be downtown Santa Cruz. We'd be somewhere safer, like Bikini Atoll just before the bomb testing kicked off.”

“Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-six years: with an idiot -- in this case, my brother, Shaun -- deciding it would be a good idea to go out and poke a zombie with a stick to see what happens.”

“Now take a good look at the life you're living and tell me: Did they do the right thing?”

“You can't kill the truth.”

“That,' he said, with almost religious fever, 'was the coolest thing you have ever done. In fact, that may have been the coolest thing you ever will do. Your entire existence has been moving toward one shining moment, George, and that was the moment when you thought, 'Hey, why don't I just go over the zombies?”

“Danger is a side effect of what I do, not the reason behind it.”

“I wanted the truth, and I wanted the news, and I'd be damned before I settled for anything less.”

“I'm a decent sprinter and I can gun a motorcycle from zero to suicidal in less than ten seconds.”

“...although I had to admit a certain affection for the Mattel booth advertising Urban Survival Barbie, now with her own Machete and blood testing unit.”

“The difference between the truth and a lie is that both of them can hurt, but only one will take the time to heal you afterward.”

“Rick stared at him. "Your brother is an alien.""Yeah, but he's a cute one.”

“He didn't have much strength to offer, but what he did have was hers without question.”

“My mother once told me that no woman is naked when she comes equipped with a bad mood and a steady glare.”

“Post-traumatic shock,' said Shaun. 'He thinks he's a boa constrictor.”

“People crave fear.”

“Every life has a watershed moment, an instant when you realize you're about to make a choice that will define everything else you ever do, and that if you choose wrong, there may not be that many things left to choose. Sometimes the wrong choice is the only one that lets you face the end with dignity, grace, and the awareness that you're doing the right thing.I'm not sure we can recognize those moments until they've passed us.”

“He'll die first, we both know it, but I don't know... I really don't know how long I'll stay alive without him. That's the part Shaun doesn't know. I don't intend to be an only child for long.”

“Me, I say those are all great things to live for, if they're what happens to float your boat, but at the end of the day, there's got to be somebody you're doing it for. Just one person you're thinking of everytime you make a decision, everytime you tell the truth, or tell a lie, or anything.I've got mine. Do you?”

“Nothing says "deeply in mourning" like canapés and free beer.”

“Never steal another reporter's story; never take the last of another reporter's ammo; never mess with another reporter's computer. Those are the rules, unless you work for a tabloid, where they replace "never" with "always"...”

“His idea of traffic safety is going too fast for the cops to catch up.”

“If we didn't fear the truths we didn't hear, we'd lose the need to fear the ones we did.”

“Don't think she can breathe over there, chief." drawled Shaun. "Pretty sure she hasn't kicked the oxygen habit yet..”

“Now I'm a God, but tomorrow, when you have to stop me from playing with dead things again, you'll be right back to calling me an idiot, won't you?”

“Any good Irwin can make going to the corner store for a candy bar and a Coke lood death defying and suicidal.”

“My father has always had just one piece of advice about zombies and ammunition, one he’s drilled into my head enough times that it’s managed to stick: When you have one bullet left and there’s no visible way out of the shit you’re standing in, save it for yourself. It’s better than the alternative.”

“Are you ever not a pessimist?""Sometimes. But then I wake up.”