Dinniman, Matt

Dungeon Crawler Carl

p.cover – “You will not break me.”
pp.32-33 – “Mordecai shook his head. ‘You humans are all the same. This is the seventh or eighth human-seeded world, and it’s always the same. You always want to know why. why can’t you just accept your circumstances and move on? My people, the skyfowls, we generally last much longer than you humans. You know why? Because we roll with it.’ "
p.44 – “Ten million people. It was more than I expected. But still, three million additional people dead in a matter of minutes. The number was so huge, it lost meaning.”
p.70 – “The cat sat on the floor. She seemed to deflate. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I… It’s just… Have you ever woken up from a long dream, one where you’re one thing, and now you’re awake, it takes you a moment to realize that’s not who you really are?’ "
p.70 – " ‘Oh, I am a princess, Carl. But I’ll try not to be too much of an asshole. I need you. And you need me, okay? Look, I’m really scared here. I don’t want to be alone. And I know you, and you don’t want to be alone, either. I saw you the other day, looking at the map on your computer, and then at those apartments on Craigslist.’ "
pp.310-311 – " ‘Look,’ she said, after a moment. ‘I know. Okay? Nobody in this room is an idiot.’ She pointed at Mordecai. ‘The moment I appeared, he was terrified of me. Once he saw I wasn’t wearing a party badge, he relaxed. When I’m done here, I go back down to the production headquarters, and I will have to face my boss, who is a member of the party. If I do or say the wrong thing, my entire family will be wiped from the universe. You’re going to go out there and face mobs who know people like you are prowling the halls, trying to find and kill them. They, the sapient ones? They live in constant fear of you guys. We are all parts of the same, inexorable machine. All of us are afraid. Yes, your place in this really sucks. It’s not fair. You know it. I know it. The cat knows it. But believe it or not, I am on your side. The better you do, the longer you survive, the better I do. So when I tell you that you should do something, you best listen because I know what I’m talking about.’ "
p.357 – “New achievement! Grease Monkey! Don’t get ahead of yourself, Dale. You built and deployed a wheeled device. When the primitive humans in Mesopotamia made the first wheel, they probably thought they were hot shit, too. It still took them another 5,000 years after that to invent the toilet.”
p.422 – “A week and a half ago, I’d been planning on kidnapping a prize-winning cat and then selling everything I owned in order to bribe my ex-girlfriend to keep her from suing me. And even that was more drama than I’d ever wanted to deal with. All of this… with the Skull Empire and everything else, it was just too much, too fast. How could we focus on surviving when we had all this other stuff to deal with?”
p.ack – “Dedicating a book to a hippo might sound like a waste of space or a silly joke, but the truth is, I’ve always been fascinated by the stories of those who survive against all odds. I think in order to truly enjoy Dungeon Crawler Carl, no matter how dark it gets (and believe me, it’s gonna get dark), you need to be the type of person who is able to cling onto hope, no matter how small that spark is. You will not break me is more than a mantra. It’s the theme to this whole series, and by dedicating this book to Fiona, I’m really dedicating it to everything she represents. Perseverance. Grit. Hope. And that’s you. Hell, it’s all of us after the shit of the past few years.”

The Butcher’s Masquerade

p.dedication – “Surviving is winning… Everything else is bullshit.”
p.13 – “Ian nodded thoughtfully. The creature had a wistful look on his face. ‘They do that. If you gain a little bit of power, they take it away.’ "
p.20 – “It was a silly dream, really. Getting a gig as a park ranger. I’d never done anything to become one. I’d had plenty of time to maybe go to school. Take classes. Something. I never even knew how one got that sort of job. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.”
p.29 – " ‘You mean, besides the sense of ethics and pride I have from working and studying for twenty cycles straight just so I can scrabble for scraps by representing condemned assholes such as yourself? The short answer is, there ain’t nothing stopping some interested third party from attempting to bribe me. The good news for you is that you’re already fucked. To screw you over, I just need to do nothing. So if I’m doing the bare minimum, that should be a sign to you that King Rust hasn’t been whispering sweet into my ears. Yet. And not that you’ll believe me, but I do have my pride. The day I take a bribe from some pig-faced imperialist fuck is the day I wither.’ "
p.29-30 – " ‘There are a lot of moving parts of the Syndicate government, and there is a bureaucrat and or a committee for each and every one of those parts. And each one of those suits and committees is beholden to rules and laws and regulations that can date back tens of thousands of cycles. And all these moving parts and interlocking teeth are all grinding their way forward through time, trying to gain some sort of upward momentum. It’s a perpetual motion machine that will only stop once the universe implodes in on itself. And how is that machine greased? The universe’s four lubricants. Blood, tears, taxes, and lawyers.’ "
p.66 – “This isn’t on me, I thought. They started this. These are their rules. Their game.”
p.74 – " ‘Mordecai, darling,’ Donut said, strolling through the room and toward the litter box. ‘We all know what you’re going to say. And while I myself have voiced my frustration with Carl’s seeming disregard for his and my own personal safety, I just want to get this conversation out of the way right here and right now. Yes, what Carl did was idiotic adn suicidal. No, I am not going to abandon him. Yes, he’s going to tell me the plan ahead of time from now on. No, we are not going to to have some long, drawn-out storyline where we break up and then get back together. We’re already doing that with Katia right now, and I just will not have it with me and Carl. So you’re just going to have to get over it and not be all ‘You don’t know what you’re dealing with.’ ’ Mordecai just opened and closed his mouth.”
p.88 – " ‘Donut,’ I said, ‘we are not–’ ‘And don’t even think about saying, ‘We’re not doing this, Donut.’ ’ She paused. ‘I have very little, and this is something we are going to do, and you’re not going to stop me.’ I just stared at her. ‘Look…’ I said, trailing off. Goddamnit, Donut. "
p.210 – “While killing a hunter directly is a worthy feat, it is not a smart one. Killing individuals may be satisfying, but the true satisfaction is hurting them on a larger scale. When one values coin above life, you should target the coin, for it hurts them more. And that is my food. My life. My god. Hurting the Naga and everyone responsible for this nightmare.”
p.378 – “Spoiler alert. Kids are all idiots, and when they’re forced into a life-or-death situation, they overwhelmingly make stupid decisions and get themselves killed. Like almost right away. They’re like that rabbit you see sitting on the side of the road that decides to dart in front of your car at the worst possible moment. They’re so efficient at getting themselves squished, you can’t help but wonder if they are doing it on purpose. Go ahead. Complain. Tell me I’m wrong. Trust me on this one. I’ve done some pretty extensive and conclusive research on the matter.”
p.426 – “I could see it in the dinosaur’s demeanor. She seemed to be fighting her every instinct to attack Donut. I’d seen it before, so many times, in so many places. That battle between what one used to be and what one had become.”
p.432 – “I had a strange sudden feeling, one I couldn’t quite understand. It was an unexpected mix of fear, sadness, but something else. Hope maybe? Pride? I didn’t know. As much as I couldn’t stand this guy, there was comfort there. Comfort in knowing we were on the same page.”
p.432 – “I didn’t add that I was almost certain that Prepotente believed this, too. This was also something that trauma could do. It could make you blind, and it could open your eyes wider than they’d ever been, all at the same time.”
p.452 – “We are meant to live solitary lives, even the eunuchs amongst us. Still, the sight of him, twisted and changed, speaking with that same voice that once said such sweet words… it broke me, friends. It broke me in such a way I did not think possible after all that has happened. They’re not the same. Even if cured of the rot injected into their aura. Don’t even try. Hope is crucial, but it can also be poison if it is blind.”
p.452 – “It took me a while to understand what our brother truly meant when he posted this. Now that I know, I, too, struggle with the knowledge. Gone is gone. Dead is dead, and anything presented to you in any other matter is nothing but a cruel, sadistic tease. We are on a fabricated stage surrounded by puppets built by the enemy. Do not ever forget this.”
p.458 – “When Big Things happen on such a large scale, it’s easy to forget sometimes that these Big Things are also happening to the little things in the world, too.”
p.483 – “Show them the lie. Show them the seams. Show them the path they’re on is a false one. Think of a trolley on a track. A worn path is easily traveled. The more worn the path, the more difficult it is to get them to look away. Just like the deeper the track, the sturdier the trolley. But even the strongest of minds, even those controlled and relentlessly corrected can be derailed just as a trolley can be derailed by a tiny, properly placed pebble. Find the pebble and place it on the path, adn their own momentum will do the work for you.”
p.586 – " ‘I hunt for the survival of the Atoll. My people may not be strong or many, but we are proud. I hunt and collect the money and bring it back home. And with that money, I am able to pay for the upkeep on our habitat. We are not considered citizens, so oxygen and land are not a right. Employment options are limited. Without this opportunity, we would be forced to sign a protection agreement with another system and live under indenture. My failure this season will make it difficult for my people to survive until the next. It is the risk I take.’ "
p.588 – " ‘They do that. If you survive long enough in this place, they’ll eventually make you turn on your own party. It happens every time. You’ll regret making it as far as you have, no matter who is helping you. No matter how close you are, we’re all alone in the end. Alone and broken with the choices we’ve had to make.’ "
p.632 – “A strange, oddly satisfying sense of calm washed over me. It was strangely comforting. Like coming into port after a long time at sea, knowing very soon you’d finally be able to rest in a real bed and sleep for a long, peaceful time.”
p.665 – " ‘That fight was terrible, wasn’t it? Worse than usual. It went quick, but it was still really bad.’ ‘It was pretty awful, Donut. If I’d known it was going to happen like this, I would’ve made you go down the stairs.’ She was silent for a moment, and then she asked the question I’d been dreading for a long time now. ‘Carl? Why doesn’t it hurt as much as it should?’ I felt the words deep in my chest.”
pp.666-667 – " ‘I know. What we went through just now was only a taste of what’s coming, especially on the ninth floor. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’re going to lose more friends. We’re going to have to do some pretty horrible things just to survive. So I need you to keep that mask on. But one day… one day you’ll find yourself someplace safe and without worries and without everyone watching, and it’ll just fall right off. And it will hurt. You will cry for Firas and Gwen and Yolanda adn Brandon and everybody else we’ve lost along the way, and you’ll be glad you had it on the whole time.’ "
p.693 – “You can be alive with damaged pride, or you can be dead with your principles. Those are the choices.”
p.696 – “Still, the advice was good. It was good because it had worked.”
p.699 – “Willow knew that the enormous centipede was a metaphor for something else. Something ‘real’ outside the dungeon. And by placing the club here, it was them telling the universe, Look at us. We have conquered you. Loo at what we can do.”
p.701 – “As someone who’d watched the Ascendency battles more times than she could count, Willow knew how powerful information was. Those who lived in the dark often died in the dark.”
p.701 – “The problem was that other than sending a literal Fuck you to Nurse Yugoslav, she’d never actually done anything. It was a lot easier to be brave with words than it was with action.”

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

p.xvi – “Carl is trying to make it so we can all really kill each other. Nobody thinks that’s going to happen. We’ll see. Carl is good at making impossible things possible.”
p.6 – “For Odette’s entire life, people were taking advantage of her. Forcing her to submit, to choose. Telling her what to do. They’d taken her entire planet. Her people. Her family.”
p.63 – " ‘We’re not going to be talking about politics,’ I said. ‘That’s not why we’re here. Nothing good ever comes from talking politics, especially when neither of us knows what the hell we’re talking about.’ "
p.83 – " ‘Today is a new day,’ Sister Ines said. ‘We don’t worry about yesterday because we can’t change the past.’ "
p.120 – " ‘It’s all blasphemous,’ Sister Ines said. There was a strange intensity to her voice, and I finally realized she was angry. Very angry. She’d been just a little off all morning. ‘It is all a mockery of our faiths and legends. They ignore the meanings behind the myths and stories, and they just see the surface, steal it, and use it to make something shiny and pretty and completely devoid of its meaning. And they mix these beloved traditions with modern fictions, things nobody ever believed to be real. It muddies the water of our stories, our histories. They don’t care. These cultures and creatures are holy to people, and they are making jokes of it all.’ "