I Am Legend and Other Stories Quotes

“After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“That's what was wrong with drinking too much. You became immune to drunken delights. There was no solace in liquor. Before you got happy, you collapsed.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“But it was hard to keep his hands still. He could almost feel them twitching emphatically with his strong desire to reach out and stroke the dog's head. He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and the dog was such a beautiful ugly dog.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain. ... Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“Come out, Neville.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of any other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician? Is he worse than the manufacturer who set up belated foundations with the money he made by handing bombs and guns to suicidal nationalists? Is he worse than the distiller who gave bastardized grain juice to stultify further the brains of those who, sober, were incapable of progressive thought? (Nay, I apologize for this calumny; I nip the brew that feeds me.) Is he worse, then, than the publisher who filled ubiquitous racks with lust and death wishes? Really, no, search your soul, lovie--is the vampire so bad?”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“The vampire was real. It was only that his true story had never been told.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“... And suddenly he thought, I'm the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a
majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just
one man.

Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces --
awe, fear, shrinking horror -- and he knew that they were afraid of
him. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a
scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was
an invisible spectre who had left for evidence of his existence the
bloodless bodies of their loved ones. And he understood what they felt
and did not hate them. His right hand tightened on the tiny envelope
of pills. So long as the end did not come with violence, so long as it
did not have to be a butchery before their eyes...

Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he
did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was
anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept
came, amusing to him even in his pain.

A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the
wall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the
final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in
death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of
forever.

I am legend.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“Now when I die, I shall only be dead.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“A man could get used to anything if he had to.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last. And understanding it seemed to give him a sort of quiet peace, a sense of having spread all the cards on his mental table, examined them, and settled conclusively on the desired hand.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“Let the jagged edge of sobriety be now dulled.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“Really now, search your soul, lovie-is the vampire so bad?

All he does is drink blood.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“For him the word 'horror' had become obsolete.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“He turned away from the bar as if he could leave the question there. But questions had no location; they could follow him around.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“He thought about that visionary lady. To die, he thought, never knowing the fierce joy and attendant comfort of a loved one's embrace. To sink into that hideous coma, to sink then into death and, perhaps, return to sterile, awful wanderings. All without knowing what it was to love and be loved.

That was a tragedy more terrible than becoming a vampire.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“I don the robe of hermit without a cry.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“No, by God, he had no intention of going on like a blind man, plodding down a path of brainless, fruitless existence until old age or accident took him. Either he found the answer or he ditched the whole mess, life included.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliché.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“She sounded angry. That was the way she'd been as long as he'd known her. If she became ill, it irritated her. She was annoyed by sickness. She seemed to regard it as a personal affront.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“The foraging for food and water, the struggle for life in a world without masters, housed in a body that man had made dependent on himself.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“She felt all right. Her heart was like a drum hanging from piano wire in her chest, slowly, slowly beaten. Her hands and feet were numb, not with cold but with a sultry torpor. Thoughts moved with a tranquil lethargy, her brain a leisurely machine imbedded in swaths of woolly packing.

She felt all right.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“When Morton Silkline reached the hall, his customer was just flapping out a small window. Quite suddenly, Morton Silkline found the floor.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend

“With words I have knit my shroud and will bury myself therein”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“All right, little boy, he tried kidding himself, calm down now. Santa Claus is coming to town with all the nice answers. No longer will you be a weird Robinson Crusoe, imprisoned on an island of night surrounded by oceans of death. ”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“You bastard, he thought, almost affectionately, watching the minuscule protoplasm fluttering on the slide. You dirty little bastard.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“[...] Pero luego el silencio cubrió las cabezas, como una manta pesada. Todos volvieron hacia Neville unos rostros pálidos. Neville los observó serenamente. Y de pronto comprendió. Yo soy el anormal ahora. La normalidad es un concepto mayoritario. Norma de muchos, no de un sólo hombre.

Y comprendió, también, la expresión de aquellos rostros: angustia, miedo, horror. Tenían miedo, sí. Era para ellos un monstruo terrible y desconocido, una malignidad más espantosa aún que la plaga. Un espectro invisible que había dejado como prueba de su existencia los cadáveres desangrados de sus seres queridos. Y Neville los comprendió, y dejó de odiarlos.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories