Lauren Beukes Quotes

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

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

The world is condensing, attention spans narrowing to tiny screens, and there are people who are wittier and smarter, who know how to write for those nanospaces.

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

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.

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

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.

She would disappear folded like origami into her own dreams.

People don't want novelty – they want the reassurance of familiarity. No-one wants to be challenged, no-one wants to have their minds blown. There is an insatiable appetite for affirmation.

Fear makes you ugly.

She was always bad cop in the family, setting rules and boundaries as if parenting wasn’t the worst game of improve ever.

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

But I really wanted to believe that there were these magic celestial bodies that would direct my life, tell me what to do, and it turns out it's not stars, it's some bits of screwy DNA. I'm just meat with faulty programming.

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.