“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
Lauren Beukes
Born place: in South Africa
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“Sam found a chair under Robin’s butt and evicted him from it, bringing it over to his pregnant wife.“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Robin apologized.
“Thanks,” Alyssa said to Robin as she sat down, even as she gave Sam a darkly amused look.
“What?” he said. “I was just helping him think.”
― Suzanne Brockmann, quote from All Through the Night
“Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.”
― Marquis de Sade, quote from Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings
“He expected too much from people, that was the problem, Ethan thought. He expected too much from life.”
― Anne Frasier, quote from Hush
“What would have happened had he not been killed? He would certainly have had a rocky road to the nomination. The power of the Johnson administration and much of the party establishment was behind Humphrey. Still, the dynamism was behind Kennedy, and he might well have swept the convention. If nominated, he would most probably have beaten the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Individuals do make a difference to history. A Robert Kennedy presidency would have brought a quick end to American involvement in the Vietnam War. Those thousands of Americans—and many thousands more Vietnamese and Cambodians—who were killed from 1969 to 1973 would have been at home with their families. A Robert Kennedy presidency would have consolidated and extended the achievements of John Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The liberal tide of the 1960s was still running strong enough in 1969 to affect Nixon’s domestic policies. The Environmental Protection Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act with its CETA employment program were all enacted under Nixon. If that still fast-flowing tide so influenced a conservative administration, what signal opportunities it would have given a reform president! The confidence that both black and white working-class Americans had in Robert Kennedy would have created the possibility of progress toward racial reconciliation. His appeal to the young might have mitigated some of the under-thirty excesses of the time. And of course the election of Robert Kennedy would have delivered the republic from Watergate, with its attendant subversion of the Constitution and destruction of faith in government. RRK”
― Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., quote from Robert Kennedy and His Times
“This hospital, like every other, is a hole in the universe through which holiness issues in blasts. It blows both ways, in and out of time.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from For the Time Being
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