Lauren Beukes Quotes

You think fear eats up your capacity for wonder, but the awe cuts through her dulled and dimmed mind. Almost a religious experience.

Everyone lives three versions of themselves; a public life, a private life and a secret life. Watch any kid and how he acts with his friends at school. Ask his momma what he’s like at home. Try and get her to believe the same kid robbed the corner store. “Not my boy,” she’ll say and she’s right. Because her boy wouldn’t do that. But we are different things to different people in different contexts.

The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless with a terrible fury all its own.

No one said it would be pretty, yanking despair out of a woman.

Fear festers in the imagination. It’s not fear’s fault. That’s just the way it’s made.

An empty house feels a certain way. Ripe with absence.

Affectionate violence. For when a hug just won't do.

The axles of corruption are greased with donut glaze.

This is the Detroit I want to write about," he says, feeling urbane as fuck. "Tattoo seances and nutty street art and text-message millionaires. People don't even know this is happening. Of course we know it's happening, shithead," Anorexic Thor says. "You don't know it's happening.

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.

Sometime I think I'd like to torture him to death. Other times, I think I'd forgive him. Because that would be worse.

Hell isn't other people, it's other parents.

She would disappear folded like origami into her own dreams.

Time heals all wounds. Wounds clot, eventually. The seams knit together.

Everyone lives three versions of themselves; a public life, a private life and a secret life. Watch any kid and how he acts with his friends at school. Ask his momma what he’s like at home. Try and get her to believe the same kid robbed the corner store. ‘Not my boy,’ she’ll say and she’s right. Because her boy wouldn’t do that. But we are different things to different people in different contexts.