Karin Slaughter Quotes

You can take my heart, but I can't let you take my dog.

Don't try to follow in my footsteps. Make your own footsteps! No one else can tell the stories that are inside of you except for you.

Keeping libraries open, giving access to all children to all books is vital to our nation's sovereignty.

I never felt isolated; I just liked being alone. I think that some people are good at being alone, and some people arent, and as a child, I really liked it.

Being a Southerner, Im interested in sex, violence, religion and all the things that make life interesting.

Reading develops cognitive skills. It trains our minds to think critically and to question what you are told. This is why dictators censor or ban books. It's why it was illegal to teach slaves to read. It's why girls in developing countries have acid thrown in their faces when they walk to school.

Reading is not just an escape. It is access to a better way of life.

Everybody had something horrible happen to them at one time or another in their life.

[On men:] ... you never know what they're like until you get them home and take them out of their packages.

As a Southerner, I love obstacles for my characters.

Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.

You didn't realize what was passing you by until you slowed down a little bit to get a better look.

People just make stupid mistakes. And they keep making them and keep making them, and suddenly they can't dig themselves out.

Books are not like albums, where you can simply download and enjoy your favorite chapter and ignore the rest.

I don't understand people who say they're bored. Look out your window.

I think that people do things for a reason - that we have mental illness, that we have genetic wiring that can get triggered by certain environmental factors.

I'm not somebody who believes in evil.

Ultimately, I'm in control of what's going on in the books, so I can back off, if it's scaring me too much.

I went to a Christian School, and when I reached a certain age, I wasn't allowed to wear pants to school anymore. There was a big conference about it with my parents about how unladylike it was for me to wear pants ,this was a school where the principal and once of the coaches stood at the front door with a wooden ruler to make sure girls' skirts were an inch below their knee. So, from that day forward, I had to wear skirts, which meant that I couldn't play on the playground like I used to. I really feel like I could've been the next Serena Williams if not for that.

I am a bit of a Dudley Do-Gooder, though, because if I see a car accident or something bad happen, I am one of those idiots who runs toward the problem instead of away from it. Not that I would recommend this behavior.

First and foremost, I want people to have a good read, because I want everything I write to entertain people. There are always different layers to the story, though, so if you want to think about social justice, or sexism or racism or homophobia, or really drill down into why the world is a better place when the police force looks like the people they are policing, then that's there, too.

I am a voracious reader myself. I don't stick to one genre. My only criteria is that it's a good story. I try to bring that to my work because I think people can read your excitement about a story.

A good editor is one of the sharpest tools a writer can have in her toolbox.

I think a lot of guys who are on the internet a lot, they're kind of anesthetized to some of the violent language and all that because they see it all the time.

A lot of men just don't read. They don't read fiction at all.

Usually, guys, when something bad happens, they punish someone else.

I grew up reading crime fiction and, especially in the '80s, women were just there to be saved or screwed.

Alafair Burke understands the criminal mind. Long Gone is both an education and an entertainment of the first order. This is a very clever and very smart novel by a very clever and smart writer. The dialogue crackles, the plot is intriguing, and the pacing is perfect.

sexual predators were like cockroaches. For every one you saw, there were twenty more hiding behind the walls.

You can only make decisions with the information you have at the time

Meg Gardiner is one of my favorite authors. She always delivers a terrific read. Phantom Instinct should go to the top of your 'to-be-read' pile.

Talking of the local Sheriff, Jake Valentine, tall and skinny and his wife Myra, "She was a short woman, maybe five feet tall in her socks, the top of her head not quite reaching Jake's chest. What she lacked in height she made up for in girth. Jeffrey guessed she was at least a hundred pounds overweight. Standing side by side, the Valentines looked like the living embodiment of the number ten.

I can’t—” Lena repeated. “I can’t do it. I can’t live without him.” Sara gently pulled her hand away from Jared’s. She smoothed down the sheet, tucked it in close around his side. She looked at Lena—really looked at her straight in the eye. “Good,” Sara told her. “Now you know how it feels.

I've always been drawn to historical fiction.

I have a few unusual fans, as you can imagine, so I try to protect the privacy of my home life.

Like every Southern writer, I thought that I needed to write the next Gone With the Wind.

Long Gone is the type of book that should come with a warning. It’s a compulsively readable, highly addictive story. The ending will leave you breathless.

It really sucks getting older. Sometimes I'll be walking along and I'll just glance over my shoulder to make sure nothing has fallen off.

A lot of novels use crime as a stepping stone to talk about greater issues. So I just think of myself as a writer.

If you're a smart guy, you should really try to find out what women are thinking. I mean, we are 51 percent of the population.

Even Gone With the Wind had a shocking, cold-blooded murder.

Every successful author I know faced crushing rejection early on, and they got back up and kept going.

The plot is very important because writers have to play fair with their readers, but no one would care about the plot if the character work wasn't there. So, basically every book I work on starts with me thinking not just about the bad thing that's going to happen, but how that bad thing is going to ripple through the community, the family of the victim, and the lives of the investigators. I am keenly aware when I'm working that the crimes I am writing about have happened to real people. I take that very seriously.

I was with a real jerk after the first heartbreak, and once I did the prerequisite eating an entire cake and singing "All By Myself" in the shower, I realized that people treat you badly when you let them, and that I had to respect myself and not let anyone else treat me that way again. If someone really loves you, they are your biggest champion, not your biggest detractor.

I'm afraid of the general things that everyone is afraid of: a bump in the night that could be a cat or Death dragging his sickle across the room; losing my health; becoming homeless, never meeting George Clooney.

When a woman creates an unlikable character, a lot of people think it's a mistake.

I'm sold as a literary writer in Holland; I'm sold as crime fiction in England. I think of it as just literature.