Top 200 Karin Slaughter Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “He sat on the bed beside Carter. He tried one-handed to press Carter’s finger to the home button on the phone. Beau said, “Won’t work when they’re dead. You need a capacitance signal in your skin to activate the ring. Gotta have a heartbeat to make that happen.”

— Karin Slaughter

102. “All the sneakiness her sister had exhibited as a child had been honed to adult perfection, so that Claire could be standing right in front of an oncoming train and still insist that everything was going to be fine.”

— Karin Slaughter

103. “To all the librarians in the world on behalf of all the kids y’all helped grow up to be writers.”

— Karin Slaughter

104. “I’m not somebody who believes in evil.”

— Karin Slaughter

105. “He had always told her that winners only competed with themselves.”

— Karin Slaughter

106. “Marriages were perplexing animals, always changing, sometimes gentle, sometimes vicious.”

— Karin Slaughter

107. “It was odd how you could love something so much, but forget about it when it wasn’t right under your nose.”

— Karin Slaughter

108. “I’m sold as a literary writer in Holland; I’m sold as crime fiction in England. I think of it as just literature.”

— Karin Slaughter

109. “It might do you some good to remember that at the end of the day, no matter how smart that brain of yours is up there, it’s your heart that needs looking after.”

— Karin Slaughter

110. “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.’ ” “The Golden Rule,” Charlie said. “Do unto others as they do unto you.”

— Karin Slaughter

111. “Michael swallowed, feeling like he was choking on his grief. “Fifteen,” he said. She’d just had a birthday last week. He’d bought her a stuffed giraffe. “She’s fifteen.”

— Karin Slaughter

112. “Men can always reinvent themselves,” Laura said. “For women, once you’re a mother, you’re always a mother.”

— Karin Slaughter

113. “I’ve always been drawn to historical fiction.”

— Karin Slaughter

114. “Her father always said that the price for hearing gossip was having someone else gossip about you.”

— Karin Slaughter

115. “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

116. “Used to be, only bikers and outlaws had tattoos. They were so commonplace now that they weren’t even a statement. Unless the statement was, “Look, I’m like everybody else.” Her.”

— Karin Slaughter

117. “As Kate had told her Oma the night before, there was no society more viciously controlled by rumor than your local police force.”

— Karin Slaughter

118. “Why did it have to be her?”

— Karin Slaughter

119. “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

120. “That’s the problem with life, Sam. If you’re not rising, you’re falling.”

— Karin Slaughter

121. “Forever was never as long as you thought it was.”

— Karin Slaughter

122. “The two women switched to their native tongue. Kate tuned them out. She understood only half of what they were saying. As with most Americans, Dutch sounded to her more like a disease of the throat than an actual language.”

— Karin Slaughter

123. “Anything’s legal if you can get away with it.” Maggie slammed the locker closed. “Welcome to the Atlanta Police Department.”

— Karin Slaughter

124. “Charlie had always told Lenore things that she would never admit to anyone else. Lenore had known Rusty for over fifty years. She was a black hole into which all of the Quinn family secrets disappeared.”

— Karin Slaughter

125. “Will always assumed that when people insisted they weren’t lying about a particular thing, that meant they were lying about something else.”

— Karin Slaughter

126. “Will had underestimated the man’s doucheness. Faith could smell it coming off him like damp in a basement.”

— Karin Slaughter

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

— Karin Slaughter

128. “She would never feel another man’s touch without wondering whether or not she could really trust him.”

— Karin Slaughter

129. “Jeffrey never understood how people could think a dead person was just sleeping. Death changed the air, charged it with something thick and unsettling.”

— Karin Slaughter

130. “I’ve got to figure out before I die whether I want to be happy or I want to be right.”

— Karin Slaughter

131. “I told him before all of this happened was that holding on to that kind of grudge was like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

— Karin Slaughter

132. “You are my child. I am your mother.” Helen sounded resolute. “I won’t apologize for doing my job.”

— Karin Slaughter

133. “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

134. “I’m not choosing anybody but myself.′ Jane was sick of men thinking they could give her ultimatums.”

— Karin Slaughter

135. “As a Southerner, I love obstacles for my characters.”

— Karin Slaughter

136. “All of your friends told the sheriff that you danced because you loved dancing, not because you were trying to attract men.”

— Karin Slaughter

137. “Reductio ad Hitlerum.” Claire couldn’t stop quoting Paul. “It’s when you compare someone to Hitler to win an argument.”

— Karin Slaughter

138. “Redneck alarm,” Charlie told her. You couldn’t step foot in the Holler without a hundred dogs howling your arrival. The deeper in you went, the more young white men you’d see standing on their front porches, one hand holding their cell phone and the other under their shirt rubbing their belly.”

— Karin Slaughter

139. “She had told herself when she put on her sweatpants this morning that she was going to the gym, and she had gone near the gym, but only because there was a Starbucks in the parking lot.”

— Karin Slaughter

140. “Will had found out the hard way that it’s nearly impossible to go to sleep with a flatulent Chihuahua sharing your pillow.”

— Karin Slaughter

141. “Violence never worked in the service of women.”

— Karin Slaughter

142. “The world stops for you when you’re pretty. That’s why women spend billions on crap for their faces. Their whole life, they’re the center of attention. People want to be around them just because they’re attractive.”

— Karin Slaughter

143. “Rippy’s. Get in the car. Drive to the motel. Wait for me.”

— Karin Slaughter

144. “If you want to measure the height of a mountain, the hardest part isn’t finding the peak, it’s figuring out where the bottom starts.”

— Karin Slaughter

145. “I’ve always preferred crazy to stupid. Stupid can break your heart.”

— Karin Slaughter

146. “Dad. I knew that was it. No more holding my hand. No more sitting in my lap. No more throwing your arms around my waist when I walked through the front door or standing on my shoes while we danced around the kitchen. I would be the bank now. The ride to your friend’s house. The critic of your biology homework. The signature on the check mailed away with your college application.”

— Karin Slaughter

147. “Remember – the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

— Karin Slaughter

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

— Karin Slaughter

149. “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

150. “Dee came out of her room and gave Lydia the greatest gift a teenage daughter can ever give her mother: she had agreed with her.”

— Karin Slaughter