Lauren Beukes Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Fresh starts don't come with expired relationships attached.

She would disappear folded like origami into her own dreams.

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

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.