“It's the truth. I'm sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don't like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there's no novelty in it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can't walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it's easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Because I said so." She paused again. "Sweetheart, I know you're an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Your mother and I had always been secretly pleased that you were so headstrong and passionate about your causes. Once you were gone, we understood that these were the qualities that painted young men as smart and ambitious and young women as trouble.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Optimism is a sliver of glass in your heart.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“You couldn't turn on the TV without hearing about the missing teenage girl. Sixteen years old. White. Middle class. Very pretty. No one ever seemed quite as outraged when an ugly woman went missing.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Her father always said that the price for hearing gossip was having someone else gossip about you.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“There is kindness in so many unexpected places”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“I want you to know that this is what happens when you meet the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with: that restless feeling dissolves like butter.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Having a teenager is like having a really, really shitty roommate. They eat all your food and steal your clothes and take money out of your purse and borrow your car without asking.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Anybody could be smart. It took a special somebody to be clever.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“People did not change their basic, core personalities. Their values tended to stay the same.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“She took him for granted sometimes. That was the luxury of a long marriage. But she knew that she loved him. She needed him. He was the anchor that kept her from drifting away.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“I loved him. I know you don’t want to believe that, but I really, truly, giddy, heart-breaking, longing, achingly loved him.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“In her defense, her helicoptering tended to revolve around making sure that Dee could take care of herself. LEARN HOW TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH OR I WILL KILL YOU. LOVE MOM.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“He said that children always have different parents, even in the same family.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Sweetheart, I know you’re an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Maybe that's why Claire had perfected the art of invisibility. It was a form of self-preservation. You couldn't resent what you could not see. She was so quiet, but she noticed everything. Her eyes tracked the world like it was a book written in a language that she could not understand. There was nothing timorous about her, but you got the feeling that she always had one foot out the door. If the situation got too hard, or too intense, she would simply disappear.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Marriage. That’s what he called it, though men like Paul do not marry women. They own them. They control them. They are voracious gluttons who devour every part of a woman, then clean their teeth with the bones.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Lydia supposed his headstone had been ordered. Something large and garish made of the finest marble and phallic shaped because being dead didn't stop you from being a dick.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“[...]"but instead of apologizing, I said, 'It's your own fault for playing tennis.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“That doesn’t sound invisible to me.” “I’m saying it wrong, then.” Lydia searched for a better way to explain. “She was always holding herself back. She was cocaptain, not captain. She could’ve dated the quarterback, but she dated his brother instead. She could’ve been top in her class, but she’d purposefully turn in a paper late or miss an assignment so she’d fall closer to the middle. She would know about Mauna Kea, but she would say Everest because winning would bring too much attention.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Clair watched the young man pour Paul's Scotch with a previously unseen professionalism. Her wedding ring, her gentle brush-offs, and her outright rejection had been minor obstacles compared to the big no of another man kissing her cheek.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“He had always told her that winners only competed with themselves.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Dyadic completion,” Paul would’ve told Claire. “The human brain tends to assume that, if there’s a victim, there has to be a villain.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Rick shuffled through the cards again. “Where is the tallest mountain on earth?” Lydia put her hand over her eyes so she could concentrate. “You said tallest, not highest elevation, so it can’t be Everest.” She made some thinking noises that caused the dogs to stir. The cat started making biscuits on her stomach. She could hear the clock ticking in the kitchen. Finally, Rick said, “Think ukulele.” She peeked through her fingers. “Hawaii?” “Mauna Kea.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“children always have different parents, even in the same family.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“She was so quiet, but she noticed everything. Her eyes tracked the world like it was a book written in a language she could not understand”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Then again, Paul had once told her that there was no such thing as coincidence. “The Law of Truly Large Numbers provides that given a large enough sample size, any outrageous thing can happen.”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“Claire hates you now. She believes me. She will never, ever take you back.
We are never ever ever getting back together. Taylor Swift. How many times had Dee played that song after she caught Heath Carmichael cheating”
― Karin Slaughter, quote from Pretty Girls
“You must remember, too," he added, "that we deal with no ordinary criminal, but with the second greatest brain in the world." I forbore to pander to his conceit by asking the obvious question.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Big Four
“Anyhow, I had found something out about an unknown privation, and I realized how a general love or craving, before it is explicit or before it sees its object, manifests itself as boredom or some other kind of suffering. And what did I think of myself in relation to the great occasions, the more sizable being of these books? Why, I saw them, first of all. So suppose I wasn't created to read a great declaration, or to boss a palatinate, or send off a message to Avignon, and so on, I could see, so there nevertheless was a share for me in all that had happened. How much of a share? Why, I knew there were things that would never, because they could never, come of my reading. But this knowledge was not so different from the remote but ever-present death that sits in the corner of the loving bedroom; though it doesn't budge from the corner, you wouldn't stop your loving. Then neither would I stop my reading. I sat and read. I had no eye, ear, or interest for anything else--that is, for usual, second-order, oatmeal, mere-phenomenal, snarled-shoelace-carfare-laundry-ticket plainness, unspecified dismalness, unknown captivities; the life of despair-harness or the life of organization-habits which is meant to supplant accidents with calm abiding. Well, now, who can really expect the daily facts to go, toil or prisons to go, oatmeal and laundry tickets and the rest, and insist that all moments be raised to the greatest importance, demand that everyone breathe the pointy, star-furnished air at its highest difficulty, abolish all brick, vaultlike rooms, all dreariness, and live like prophets or gods? Why, everybody knows this triumphant life can only be periodic. So there's a schism about it, some saying only this triumphant life is real and others that only the daily facts are. For me there was no debate, and I made speed into the former.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from The Adventures of Augie March
“Finn had finished his coffee run and was strolling back down the hallway, a mug of his steaming chicory brew in his left hand. He saw Vinnie heading toward him, sighed, and reached around behind his back with his right hand. Finn came up with a gun, which he leveled at Vinnie’s head.
The Ice elemental froze in the doorway.
“Why don’t you be a good boy, Vinnie, and go sit down,” Finn said in a pleasant voice before taking a sip of his coffee. His eyes never left the other man, and his gun never wavered. Finn could be a bad-ass when he had to, just like me.”
― Jennifer Estep, quote from Tangled Threads
“Bohr proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.”
― Richard Rhodes, quote from The Making of the Atomic Bomb
“Love doesn't come along too often. Believe me, I know. When it does, only the foolish let it fade. Even if it is him.”
― H.M. Ward, quote from Demon Kissed
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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