Quotes from The Shining Girls

“She would disappear
folded like origami
into her own dreams”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“There are only so many plots in the world. It's how they unfold that makes them interesting.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“The problem with snapshots is that they replace actual memories. You lock down the moment and it becomes all there is of it.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“There are patterns because we try to find them. A desperate attempt at order because we can't face the terror that it might all be random.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Next time, can you ask him to bring cookies? I don't like to put up with that level of insane unless there's some kind of high-calorie compensation.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Only other people can make you feel real.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Memory is curated. All this paraphernalia you collect to ward off forgetting”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Can't reinvent the wheel. But you can put your own spin on it.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“But she was the kind of girl you couldn't keep down. Unless you cut her up and caved in her skull.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Being her friend was like going to a tropical island for a little fun in the sun, only to be kidnapped by terrorists.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“She's even been practicing making out with the back of her hand. Which was about as effective as tickling yourself. It's why you needed other fingers, other tongues. Only other people can make you feel real.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Grown-up relationships are complicated. We got what we needed from each other. Passion. A safety net. Some kind of solace. It's lonely out there. But it ran its course. It was lovely while it lasted. But everything is finite. Life. Love. All this. Sadness too. Although that's harder to let go of than happiness. - Rachel Mazrachi”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“I'm scared, Mom." ... "It's okay, honey. It's all right. That's the big secret, don't you know? Everyone is. All the time.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Dope don't have no sympathy, not for love or family, definitely not for fear. Put dope and the devil up against each other in the ring, and dope will win out. Every single time.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Oh, but fine isn't everything!' Rachel exclaims and grabs her hands and pulls her into a stepping foxtrot over the paintings, twirling her round. 'Fine is the very definition of mediocrity. It's what's polite. It's what's socially acceptable. We need to live brighter and deeper than just fine, my darling!”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“We do this to ourselves. Society is a poisonous hamster wheel.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“If you want to kiss me again, then shut the fuck up and stop bleeding to death”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Affectionate violence. For when a hug just won't do. That's a Hallmark card for you.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Time heals. Crushes let up. Splinters work their way out. Doesn't mean they don't leave scars that itch.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Nothing is infinitely reducible. You can split an atom but you can't vaporize it. Stuff sticks around. It clings to you, even when it's broken.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Six foot eight and all asshole.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“He adds, wistfully, "I don't suppose you have syphilis, do you?"
"No."
"Pity. There's a study starting in Alabama that would have paid for all your medical care if you did. Although you'd have to be a Negro."
"I'm not that, either."
"Too bad." The doctor shrugs.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“(…) everything is finite. Life. Love. All this.' (…) 'Sadness too. Although that's harder to let go of than happiness.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“You can bury your radical magazines and tear up your sexually perverse sketches and burn your sheets. But how do you erase who you are?”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“Fear festers in the imagination. It’s not fear’s fault. That’s just the way it’s made. Nightmares breed. Allies become enemies. Subversives are everywhere. Paranoia justifies any persecution, and privacy is a luxury when the Reds have the bomb.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“It doesn't escape him that the rock holding it up is the perfect fit for his fist. Or how easily one of those needle spokes would slide right through the girl's eye like Jell-O.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“And he's sorry he ever doubted the House. She's the one. One of the ones. His shining girls.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“A gut wound will drop a man in his tracks every time. Harper always found it more personal than bullets, getting right up into someone. It made the war bearable.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

“It's why you need other fingers, other tongues. Only other people can make you feel real.”
― Lauren Beukes, quote from The Shining Girls

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“It’s always hard to lose somebody. It leaves a hole in you heart that never grows back. ”
― Kevin Brooks, quote from Lucas

“You want me to attend your hanging?”
His tone must have contained some of the incredulity he felt, for the captain gave him an impatient look.
“I’d have sent an engraved invitation, had I time,” he said.”
― Diana Gabaldon, quote from Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade

“পৃথিবীতে যারা মুখ ফুটে নালিশ করতে পারে না, চুপ করে থাকে, তারাই উলটে আসামি হয়।”
― Rabindranath Tagore, quote from Gora

“It's never going to stop,’ Malenfant whispered. ‘It will consume the Solar System, the stars—’
This isn't some local phenomenon, Malenfant. This is a fundamental change in the structure of the universe. It will never stop. It will sweep on, growing at light speed, a runaway feedback fueled by the collapse of the vacuum itself. The Galaxy will be gone in a hundred thousand years, Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy, in a couple of million years. It will take time, but eventually—
‘The future has gone,’ Malenfant said. ‘My God. That’s what this means, isn’t it? The downstream can’t happen now. All of it is gone. The colonization of the Galaxy; the settlement of the universe; the long, patient fight against entropy...’ That immense future had been cut off to die, like a tree chopped through at the root. ‘Why, Michael? Why have the children done this? Burned the house down, destroyed the future—’
Because it was the wrong future. Michael looked around the sky. He pointed to the lumpy, spreading edge of the unreality bubble.
There. Can you see that? It's already starting...
‘What is?’
The budding... The growth of the true vacuum region is not even. There will be pockets of the false vacuum—remnants of our universe—isolated by the spreading true vacuum. The fragments of false vacuum will collapse. Like—
‘Like black holes.’ And in that instant, Malenfant understood. ‘That’s what this is for. This is just a better way of making black holes, and budding off new universes. Better than stars, even.’
Much better. The black holes created as the vacuum decay proceeds will overwhelm by many orders of magnitude the mere billion billion that our universe might have created through its stars and galaxy cores.
‘And the long, slow evolution of the universes, the branching tree of cosmoses?...’
We have changed everything, Malenfant. Mind has assumed responsibility for the evolution of the cosmos. There will be many daughter universes—universes too many to count, universes exotic beyond our imagining—and many, many of them will harbor life and mind.
‘But we were the first.’
Now he understood. This was the purpose. Not the long survival of humankind into a dismal future of decay and shadows, the final retreat into the lossless substrate, where nothing ever changed or grew. The purpose of humankind—the first intelligence of all—had been to reshape the universe in order to bud others and create a storm of mind. We got it wrong, he thought. By striving for a meaningless eternity, humans denied true infinity. But we reached back, back in time, back to the far upstream, and spoke to our last children—the maligned Blues—and we put it right. This is what it meant to be alone in the universe, to be the first. We had all of infinite time and space in our hands. We had ultimate responsibility. And we discharged it. We were parents of the universe, not its children.”
― Stephen Baxter, quote from Manifold: Time

“Something horrible had happened here, and had left it's residue behind. It seemed to rise from the bottom of the tiled pool and leak from the ceiling, clinging to the walls and binding itself like some parasite into any host it could ensnare. I imagined it's cold fingers rooting inside me, spreading throughout, and leaving traces of itself embedded in my soul.”
― Lani Woodland, quote from Intrinsical

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.