Top 140 Karen M. McManus Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Family first, always.”

— Karen M. McManus

2. “You gotta shoot your shot when it comes... Who knows if you’ll get another chance?”

— Karen M. McManus

3. “Everyone got secrets right? What really matters is how far you’ll go to protect them.”

— Karen M. McManus

4. “You can be right in principle and still wrong in approach.”

— Karen M. McManus

5. “That’s the kind of person you can get away with killing: someone everybody else wants dead.”

— Karen M. McManus

6. “No matter how awful the rest of my life is, my hair still manages to look good.”

— Karen M. McManus

7. “That’s life in the Talbot household. My father works hard, but at jobs that don’t pay much and offer zero stability. He’s been laid off more times than I can count. On the one hand, you have to give the guy credit for plugging along, always landing something right before things fall apart. On the other hand, it’d be nice not to have to choose which bills to pay every month.”

— Karen M. McManus

8. “Good thing life is long and high school is short.”

— Karen M. McManus

9. “But you can’t change the past, you know? All you can do is try harder next time. So don’t give up on yourself just yet.”

— Karen M. McManus

10. “Silence falls as we get lost in our own regrets.”

— Karen M. McManus

11. “The world would be a better place if more people knew when to stop talking. Everyone says too much, all the time. Ask them a simple question, and they’ll give you their entire life story. No one cares! Just say yes or no.”

— Karen M. McManus

12. “I know that you can have the best intentions and still get the worst results.”

— Karen M. McManus

13. “What is Bayview best known for? Revenge.”

— Karen M. McManus

14. “I don’t understand why the world insists on stuffing kids into boxes we never asked for, and then gets mad when we won’t stay there.”

— Karen M. McManus

15. “Unless one of us is lying. Which is always a possibility.”

— Karen M. McManus

16. “Some people are too toxic to live. They just are.”

— Karen M. McManus

17. “Are we friends, or just a couple of people without better options?”

— Karen M. McManus

18. “But I’m starting to realize there are some things you can’t undo, no matter how good your intentions are.”

— Karen M. McManus

19. “Holding on to resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

— Karen M. McManus

20. “You find out who your real friends are when stuff like this happens. Turns out I didn’t have any, but I’m glad Cooper does.”

— Karen M. McManus

21. “I want to kiss her more than I want air.”

— Karen M. McManus

22. “I guess we’re almost friends now, or as friendly as you can get when you’re not one hundred percent sure the other person isn’t framing you for murder.”

— Karen M. McManus

23. “I haven’t felt like a kid since that day in the woods, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can get back.”

— Karen M. McManus

24. “A couple of words is all it’ll take to make everything in my life Before and After.”

— Karen M. McManus

25. “She’s a princess and you’re a jock,” he says. He thrusts his chin toward Bronwyn, then at Nate. “And you’re a brain. And you’re a criminal. You’re all walking teen-movie stereotypes.”

— Karen M. McManus

26. “We could be surrounded by walking dead in the zombie apocalypse and she’d look for the bright side.”

— Karen M. McManus

27. “No matter how much you care about someone, things change when they used to be around all the time an then suddenly, they’re not.”

— Karen M. McManus

28. “When life gives you lemons, make lemon cake.”

— Karen M. McManus

29. “People get very angry when police officers are accused of a crime, but that anger is often displaced toward the accuser or the victim. The conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience is well documented.”

— Karen M. McManus

30. “You’re not perfect. So what? Welcome to the real world.”

— Karen M. McManus

31. “It sucks when the person who ruined your life gets to walk around like always. As if what they did doesn’t matter. I beg to disagree with your conclusion, though. There’s always something you can do. -Darkestmind.”

— Karen M. McManus

32. “I know what it’s like to tell yourself a lie so often that it becomes the truth.”

— Karen M. McManus

33. “Addy gives me hope, because even though her life fell apart when Simon’s blog revealed her worst mistake, she put things back together–better than before. She’s stronger, happier, and much closer to her sister. Addy is the queen of second chances, and right now I really need the reminder that those exist.”

— Karen M. McManus

34. “I can’t stop thinking about how rare it is to have someone you can be completely real with, even when things get raw and uncomfortable and a little scary. Especially then.”

— Karen M. McManus

35. “These murder club meetings are becoming a regular thing. We need a new name, though.”

— Karen M. McManus

36. “Things’ll get worse before they get better.”

— Karen M. McManus

37. “Welcome to life in a small town. You’re only as good as the best thing your family’s done. Or the worst.”

— Karen M. McManus

38. “People who never get told no are so bad at hearing it.”

— Karen M. McManus

39. “A pen,” he says, his eyes scanning Simon’s brick-red face. “You have a pen?” Simon nods wildly, his hand clawing at his throat. I grab the pen off my desk and try to hand it to Nate, thinking he’s about to do an emergency tracheotomy or something. Nate just stares at me like I have two heads. “An epinephrine pen,” he says, searching for Simon’s backpack. “He’s having an allergic reaction.”

— Karen M. McManus

40. “I have to figure out a way to live with that, and it won’t be by not forgiving other people’s mistakes.”

— Karen M. McManus

41. “People like to think they’re open-minded, but if you toss a tired gender stereotype on their path they’ll run with it every time.”

— Karen M. McManus

42. “When you come into the world with another person, they’re as much a part of you as your heartbeat.”

— Karen M. McManus

43. “Ezra watches them leave with a bemused expression, then turns to me. “I have a really strong feeling that on Wednesdays, they wear pink.”

— Karen M. McManus

44. “Everybody has secrets,′ she says, taking a sip of her drink. ‘That’s nondebatable. The only question is whether you’re keeping your own, or someone else’s.”

— Karen M. McManus

45. “Sexism is alive and well in true-crime coverage, because Bronwyn and I aren’t nearly as popular with the general public as Cooper and Nate.”

— Karen M. McManus

46. “Katrin would either have to be so desperate that she lost all sense of right and wrong, or be a cold-blooded killer.”

— Karen M. McManus

47. “I know that secrets can eat you alive, and the truth can break your heart, and sometimes it’s hard to know which is worse.”

— Karen M. McManus

48. “Like we’re some kind of hip high school murder club without a care in the world.”

— Karen M. McManus

49. “I thought you’d look how you talk.” I’m not going to rise to the bait and ask her what she means, but she keeps going without prompting. “Like a constipated gnome.”

— Karen M. McManus

50. “Population 4,935.’ Never changed the entire eighteen years I lived there,” she’d say with a smirk. “Apparently if you’re going to bring someone in, you have to take someone out first.”

— Karen M. McManus