Quotes from How to Lead a Life of Crime

Kirsten Miller ·  434 pages

Rating: (3K votes)


“What takes more guts? To fight for your own life at any cost—or prove that you're willing to lose it?”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“You’re never ready for the truth. No matter how much you think you know, it always takes you by surprise.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“Where's the course called How to Lead a Life of Crime? That's what this is about, isn't it? You've got everyone thinking this is the best school in the country, but it's really just a Hogwarts for hustlers.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“You've either bat-shit insane or you've watched too many movies. This isn't Star Wars, Mandel. I'm not Luke Skywalker. My dad's not Darth Vader. And you sure as hell aren't my Obi-Wan.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“Aside from the nagging, he's the most entertaining hallucination I've ever had.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime



“What would it be like to exist in a world without suffering? To have no needs, only desires? To be surrounded by so much beauty that you forget how ugly life is for everyone else? Who wouldn’t want that? Who wouldn’t be willing to fight for it? What the alumni did to get there – lie, cheat, steal, kill – I’m sure they’d all say it was worth it. And I bet they sleep soundly because they know that their nameless, faceless victims would have done the same thing.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“See? You’re the crazy one, you redheaded freak.

I’ve been attempting to translate the phrase into Latin. If I ever succeed, I shall make it my personal motto.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“Gwendolyn and I have a beautiful relationship. She tells me everything. I haven't killed her yet.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“I kept my arms around Joi and my face buried deep in her hair while I waited for Peter Pan to slip through the window. I thought I needed him to tell me what I should do. But he never showed up. He left me alone with a girl who smelled of jasmine and cocoa butter. And before I fell asleep, I finally realized that was more than enough.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“Why are you here?"
"Because you never said goodbye.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime



“You're my one good thing now.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“Can I ask you a question? I swear it's not about heaven."
Joi laughs. "Shoot."
"Why do you love me?" I ask her.
"Because you love me back," she says without hesitation.
"You have no idea how much," I tell her.
"Yes, I do," she says.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“Joi..."
"Shut up," she says as she unbuttons my shirt. "I didn't bring you here for a heart-to-heart. How do I get this thing off without hurting you?”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


“You will also be called upon to provide well-timed distractions. Get the whole country arguing about sex education or gays in the military, and Americans will stop paying attention to all the things they should fear.”
― Kirsten Miller, quote from How to Lead a Life of Crime


About the author

Kirsten Miller
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Popular quotes

“In church, does it ever seem to you a kind of game? Hypocritical. Be humble, they say, yet people come in their best clothes. Give penance, yet as they close their eyes and kneel, they compare who is better dressed, the beauty of someone else’s wife, the sway of her hips, they think of anything but prayers.”
― Tess Uriza Holthe, quote from When the Elephants Dance


“No knowledge is ever wasted. To quote the apostle Paul: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).”
― Ben Carson, quote from Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story


“Inferiority is not banal or incidental even when it happens to women. It is not a petty affliction like bad skin or
circles under the eyes. It is not a superficial flaw in an otherwise
perfect picture. It is not a minor irritation, nor is it a trivial
inconvenience, an occasional aggravation, or a regrettable but
(frankly) harmless lapse in manners. It is not a “point of view”
that some people with soft skins find “ offensive. ” It is the deep
and destructive devaluing of a person in life, a shredding of dignity and self-respect, an imposed exile from human worth
and human recognition, the forced alienation of a person from
even the possibility of wholeness or internal integrity. Inferiority
puts rightful self-love beyond reach, a dream fragmented by
insult into a perpetually recurring nightmare; inferiority creates
a person broken and humiliated inside. The fragments—
scattered pieces and sharp slivers of someone who can never
be made whole—are then taken to be the standard of what is
normal in her kind: women are like that. The insult that hurt
her—inferiority as an assault, ongoing since birth—is seen as a
consequence, not a cause, of her so-called nature, an inferior nature. In English, a graceful language, she is even called a
piece. It is likely to be her personal experience that she is insufficiently
loved. Her subjectivity itself is second-class, her experiences
and perceptions inferior in the world as she is inferior
in the world. Her experience is recast into a psychologically
pejorative judgment: she is never loved enough because she is
needy, neurotic, the insufficiency of love she feels being in and
of itself evidence of a deep-seated and natural dependency. Her
personal experiences or perceptions are never credited as having
a hard core of reality to them. She is, however, never loved
enough. In truth; in point of fact; objectively: she is never loved
enough. As Konrad Lorenz wrote: “ I doubt if it is possible to
feel real affection for anybody who is in every respect one’s inferior.
” 1 There are so many dirty names for her that one rarely
learns them all, even in one’s native language.”
― Andrea Dworkin, quote from Intercourse


“I love you”, he whispered. “You’ll have the words every day for the rest of our lives.”
― Katherine Allred, quote from What Price Paradise


“Istanbul is the only city in the entire world built on two separate continents. The Bosporus Straits separate the two parts. Our European side alone has a greater population than the entire country of Belgium, but for some reason Europeans still look upon us as Asians.”               Ever the scholar, Elijah immediately countered, “Pay no attention to them. The so-called ‘Asians’ included people like Moses, the prophet Isaiah, and Jesus. And they are but a minuscule sample of the many ‘Asians’ who made it in life. After all, they wrote the greatest bestselling book of all times - the Bible.”
― Nathan Erez, quote from The Kabbalistic Murder Code


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