“My father and his eight siblings grew up in the kind of poverty that Americans don’t like to talk about unless a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina strikes, and then the conversation only lasts as long as the news cycle. His family squatted in shacks. The children scavenged for food.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Every writer I know got their start in a library somewhere. We read a book, and we thought, ‘I want to do that.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“Reading develops cognitive skills. It trains our minds to think critically and to question what you are told. This is why dictators censor or ban books. It’s why it was illegal to teach slaves to read. It’s why girls in developing countries have acid thrown in their faces when they walk to school.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Even if you live in a big city, everybody lives in a small town. We identify ourselves by our neighborhoods – ‘I live in the Village, or in Chelsea.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“There’s a tendency among some male writers to make the women in their stories weak and needing of rescue so that their hero looks like a manly man.”
― Karin Slaughter
“For many children, the library represents their only access to books, reading, and the Internet outside of their home. If you think about how far behind a child would be without access to these fundamental tools – tools that are vital to successful employment later in life – it’s a travesty.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I started Save the Libraries in 2010 by hosting a big fundraiser in my city library of DeKalb County in Atlanta. Through that, I learned that even with fundraisers, libraries often don’t make money – they just barely break even.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Graphic novels let you take risks that just wouldn’t fly in the conventional book form.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Equal access to reading is fundamental to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
― Karin Slaughter
“That’s why I love crime novels so much: When I write a crime novel, the conflict is built in.”
― Karin Slaughter
“We make assumptions: nurses should be nice, teachers should be good. But everyone has a dark side, some darker than others.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Books are not like albums, where you can simply download and enjoy your favorite chapter and ignore the rest.”
― Karin Slaughter
“As voters and taxpayers, we must demand that our local governments properly prioritize libraries. As citizens, we must invest in our library down the street so that the generations served by that library grow up to be adults who contribute not just to their local communities but to the world.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I think some people are good at being alone, and some people aren’t, and as a child, I really liked it.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Visual storytelling is at once immediate and subversive.”
― Karin Slaughter
“When you grow up starving, you cannot point with pride to a book you’ve just spent six hours reading. Picking cotton, sewing flour bags into clothes – those were the skills my father grew up appreciating.”
― Karin Slaughter
“As the youngest of three girls, most of my childhood works were revenge fantasies against my older sisters, so of course the sisters in ‘Pretty Girls’ share some similarities to my own.”
― Karin Slaughter
“The book that first made me want to be a writer is Flannery O’Connor’s short story collection ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“My sister is dyslexic, and she’s so smart, so intelligent in all of the ways that matter.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Anyone who’s been to high school with teenage girls knows how horrible girls can be.”
― Karin Slaughter
“It sounds pretentious to say I ‘divide’ my time, but when I am home, that usually means my house in Atlanta or my cabin in the North Georgia Mountains. The latter is where I do the majority of my writing.”
― Karin Slaughter
“My typical morning involves some time on the treadmill, but obviously I skip that a lot. Mostly, I wake up, check my email, then get to work on the various interviews and questions and phone calls that come with being an author.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’m extremely introverted. I used to think it was shyness, but I got over that, so it must be door No. 2. It’s still hard for me to be away from home much, and I have to make sure I get lots of time alone in my room when I’m touring.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I love puns. I’ve been known to turn the car around just to take advantage of a good pun situation. It really is the highest form of humor.”
― Karin Slaughter
“As a Southerner, I love obstacles for my characters.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I know the cadence of the language and the voice of Atlanta because I’ve lived here for so long.”
― Karin Slaughter
“When I was little, my grandmother would take me to church with her, and she would introduce me to people.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I read extensively about serial killers and all sorts of things people get up to.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I never felt isolated; I just liked being alone. I think that some people are good at being alone, and some people aren’t, and as a child, I really liked it.”
― Karin Slaughter
“When I’m on a good go, I can do 12, 13 hours of writing.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I could type in a closet and be fine. It’s just a matter of cocooning myself. Just me and the story.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Feminism has been so co-opted, but the fact is, feminism benefits men as well.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Flannery O’Connor was a revelation for me. When I read her, I was very young, and I didn’t understand what she was doing. I didn’t see any of the Catholicism or any of the social stuff.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’m really boring. I get up early. I go to bed early. I don’t smoke or drink. I mean, I’ll eat a cupcake. I’m just not a crazy, stay-out-all-night sort of person. I love writing.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I certainly went to high school with some mean girls, and I would not wish that hell on anybody.”
― Karin Slaughter
“My job isn’t to preach to people, it’s to entertain them. I like letting the characters speak for themselves.”
― Karin Slaughter
“When I was growing up, my stepmother’s sister was the chief detective in one of the adjoining towns, so she piqued my interest in crime.”
― Karin Slaughter
“The most enduring stories in literature generally have some kind of crime at their center, whether it’s the bloody butchery of ‘Hamlet,’ the lecherous misanthropes of Dickens or the lone gunman from ‘The Great Gatsby.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“Even ‘Gone With the Wind’ had a shocking, cold-blooded murder.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Good writers know that crime is an entre into telling a greater story about character. Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Pushing the boundaries of polite society does not just fall under the purview of crime fiction authors.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I always say ‘thriller;’ if they see you’re a woman – and you’re a blond woman – people assume you’re writing about cats and romances where somebody has died.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I have a lot of men who will say to me, ‘I don’t read books by women, but I like you.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“Like every Southern writer, I thought that I needed to write the next ‘Gone With the Wind.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’ve always been drawn to historical fiction.”
― Karin Slaughter
“When you read a book, you are letting another person distract your thoughts and work your emotions. If they are adept, there’s nothing better than turning off and getting lost.”
― Karin Slaughter
“People forget that writers start off being readers. We all love it when we find a terrific read, and we want to let people know about it.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I didn’t want to spend the next thirty years writing about bad things happening in the same small town – not least of all because people would begin to wonder why anyone still lives there!”
― Karin Slaughter
“I paid for my name a lot when I was growing up because other kids teased me.”
― Karin Slaughter
“My books are never about the crimes. They are about how the characters react to the crimes.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I think being a woman and writing frankly about violence has gotten me some attention, and as someone who wants people to read my books, I can’t complain about that attention, but it does puzzle me that this is something reviewers focus on.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I taped the autopsy photos from Marilyn Monroe’s death to my lunch box in fifth grade, and I would write stories in which someone inevitably died.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I set the goal of getting a book contract by age thirty.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I have a few unusual fans, as you can imagine, so I try to protect the privacy of my home life.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I can clearly trace my passion for reading back to the Jonesboro, Georgia, library, where, for the first time in my life, I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of books.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Prior to the Civil War, most libraries were either privately owned or housed in universities or churches.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Books give us insight into other people, other cultures. They make us laugh. They make us think. If they are really good, they make us believe that we are better for having read them. You don’t read a book – you experience it. Every story opens up a new world.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Being a Southerner, I’m interested in sex, violence, religion and all the things that make life interesting.”
― Karin Slaughter
“My dad believed in scaring us as we were growing up. Scaring the boys who wanted to date us more.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’ve always been interested in violence, even as a teenager. I loved ‘Helter Skelter’ and books like that.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I think crime fiction is a great way to talk about social issues, whether ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ or ‘The Lovely Bones;’ violence is a way to open up that information you want to get out to the reader.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I think that characters who are nice all the time and who you sympathize with can get really boring.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Everybody had something horrible happen to them at one time or another in their life.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I think a lot of people are curious about what makes people do what they do, and I guess my curiosity isn’t hidden in any way.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I read about violent things. I think what I get out of that is entertainment by learning about different things, and reading the genre and getting an understanding of motivations. But at the end of the day, it’s still a book, and I can walk away.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I busted my chin open trying to be Evel Knievel on my bike. When it happened, you could see straight through to the bone, I thought my dad was going to pass out. It left a scar that I still have now.”
― Karin Slaughter
“It’s hard because people often don’t recognise shyness; they think it’s just someone being rude. I have had to work to overcome that, especially if I’m meeting my readers at author events, because I don’t want them to think I’m snooty or rude.”
― Karin Slaughter
“If you wear them outside, they stop being pyjamas. I wear mine to the mail box, which is right in front of my house – that’s my limit. Anything else is wrong.”
― Karin Slaughter
“If I wasn’t a writer, I would probably be a watchmaker. I like putting puzzles together, and that is what a watch is, figuring out how all the gears and everything else works together. I’m patient and good at focusing on a single task.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I am hard-pressed to find a successful writer who doesn’t have a similar story to mine – transformation through the public library.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Reading is power. Reading is life.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I love twins stories.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I think a lot of guys who are on the Internet a lot, they’re kind of anesthetized to some of the violent language and all that because they see it all the time.”
― Karin Slaughter
“People don’t just love mysteries. They are obsessed with them – especially the kind that are never definitively solved.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Crafting a piece of gripping, narrative true crime that engages the world is not that different from crafting a piece of crime fiction.”
― Karin Slaughter
“The most important lesson I have learned from spending years talking to law enforcement officers is that the vast majority of them really want to do a good job. They have a physical need to do a good job. And yet, we don’t give them the resources that would help them.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Prosecutors and public defenders deserve to make a living wage.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I write fifteen hours a day, stopping at Oprah-o’clock.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’m going to name a name: Janet Evanovich. She writes the same book over and over, and I read every single one of them and eagerly anticipate them.”
― Karin Slaughter
“It’s just my goal to deliver the best story I can, and I want to make sure each book is better than the last, and in order to do that, I have to take chances.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Men are more particular, and they’re not going to grab something with a bodice-ripper cover on it.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Growing up in Georgia in the southeastern United States, I was always reading and always kept to myself. I never felt isolated, though; I just liked being alone.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’ve always been drawn to dark stories. I enjoy reading Flannery O’Connor, Patricia Highsmith, and Margaret Mitchell.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I love reading almost as much as I love writing.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Most of my books begin with a nap on my couch here, when I dream up characters and story lines, and then I write on my laptop in the recliner and handle the business side of email at my desk, which is sagging in the middle – maybe from so many words?”
― Karin Slaughter
“Oh, I’m completely OCD about neatness.”
― Karin Slaughter
“It was always my dream to write for a living.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I always wanted to be a writer. In the beginning, I thought I had to rewrite ‘Gone with the Wind,’ but eventually, I found my way and realized that wasn’t me.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I grew up reading thrillers. Honestly, I was always drawn to the very detailed ones like Patricia Cornwell. I love details.”
― Karin Slaughter
“If you’re going to write thrillers, you have to make a decision if you are going to be realistic or go off and over.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Women know how to scare other women.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Southerners have this love of embellishment. Even when you read a police report, there’s some backstory.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Random House is definitely invested in keeping libraries healthy.”
― Karin Slaughter
“It seems like women are always told, ‘It is not your time.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“Women can be two different people – one person at home, another at work.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I thought I had to write literature and add my name to the list of great Southern storytellers. Fortunately for me, no one wanted to read any of those stories. They got rejected by everyone. Sometimes, I would get a note saying they liked the writing, but the story simply didn’t work.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I grew up in a small town in Georgia where nothing bad happened – it was like Mayberry.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I never want to write a book just to tell a story. There is always something deeper going on.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Librarians have always stood up for writers and readers in every kind of community across this country.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Denise Mina is probably one of the most gifted writers out there, whether it’s mystery or literary or whatever label you want to give it.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Jack Reacher is one of the sexiest characters in fiction.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Libraries are the backbone of our education system.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I grew up having the library as the best place ever. I spent a lot of weekends there as a kid – my parents would drop me off and leave me there all day. I would just sit in the back and read whatever I could find.”
― Karin Slaughter
“When I became a published writer, I said, ‘Whatever I can do to help the libraries I want to do,’ so all of my book tours since then have involved me coming to a library and talking about how important libraries are for a community.”
― Karin Slaughter
“No matter where you are on the political spectrum, libraries make sense. It’s such a small investment. Every dollar supporting a library system returns five dollars to the community.”
― Karin Slaughter
“’Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case,’ ‘The Secret of the Old Clock,’ ‘Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret,’ ‘Flowers in the Attic,’ ‘Gone With the Wind’ – these are the books that defined my childhood. They thrilled me. They made me feel like I wasn’t alone in the world.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Though he was not a reader himself, my father understood that reading is not just an escape. It is access to a better way of life.”
― Karin Slaughter
“With ‘Pretty Girls,’ I saw the opportunity to talk not just about crime but what crime leaves behind.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Usually, when inspiration strikes late, the light of day reveals that I haven’t gotten an idea for a book so much as a psychiatric case study.”
― Karin Slaughter
“As awful as crime can be, it’s what happens afterward – the struggling to get out of bed, to put one foot in front of the other – that alters people.”
― Karin Slaughter
“No crime lab in the world looks like the ‘CSI’ ones because there’s simply not the money for all those fancy machines.”
― Karin Slaughter
“There aren’t many people in the world who can say that they are doing the job they’ve wanted to do since childhood, so in that regard, I feel incredibly fortunate.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’m over the word ‘like’ in conversation, and ‘you know’ seems to be the placeholder of choice, but when I’m writing dialogue, I tend to use those phrases because that’s how people talk.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’ve never purposefully based a character on any one person I know, but I’m certain there are amalgamations that exist.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I can clearly trace my passion for reading back to the Jonesboro, Georgia, library, where for the first time in my life I had access to what seemed like an unlimited supply of books. This was where I discovered ‘Encyclopedia Brown’ and ‘Nancy Drew,’ ‘Gone With the Wind’ and ‘Rebecca.’ This was where I became inspired to be a writer.”
― Karin Slaughter
“If there is still an American dream, reading is one of the bootstraps by which we can all pull ourselves up.”
― Karin Slaughter
“As much as we would like to deny it, reading is not vital to human survival.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Reading is exercise for our brains in the guise of pleasure. Books give us insight into other people, other cultures. They make us laugh. They make us think. If they are really good, they make us believe that we are better for having read them.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I grew up watching the ‘People’s Choice Awards.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“I read a lot of true crime growing up – ‘The Stranger Beside Me’ by Ann Rule about Ted Bundy.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Readers are very, very savvy, and I don’t want to insult them by making them think I’m too lazy to get it right.”
― Karin Slaughter
“It’s a very Southern thing to be interested in dark stuff.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I have a superhero complex. If I see anything bad happen, I run towards it, rather idiotically because, after all, what could I do?”
― Karin Slaughter
“Flannery O’Connor was a revelation for me. When I read her, I was very young, and I didn’t understand what she was doing. I didn’t see the – any of the Catholicism or any of the social stuff.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I’m just not a crazy, stay-out-all-night sort of person. I love writing.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I don’t get hung up a lot on angst.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I never really fitted in, because I’ve always been interested in really dark things.”
― Karin Slaughter
“My sister lived in England for a while when I was 12, and I came to visit her, and I spent most of the time in her flat reading.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Women who write thrillers are called ‘dark.’ Male writers are called ‘powerful.’”
― Karin Slaughter
“In the South, we drink the Bible with our mother’s milk.”
― Karin Slaughter
“When you write as a woman, there’s this feeling there’s going to be a softness.”
― Karin Slaughter
“You can take risks with the characters and their development in a standalone novel.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I always want to make sure the book I’m writing is the best book I can deliver.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I want to be a better writer. I want to learn and grow, to know how to tell stories in a different and more challenging way. I’ve learned it doesn’t get easier each time. It actually gets harder.”
― Karin Slaughter
“What I know is the characters in a Southern town. I know the cadence of the language and the voice of Atlanta because I’ve lived here for so long. And I know the neighborhoods, and I hopefully know the people, and I feel a connection to them. And I also feel like I’m honoring them when I talk about them.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I always try to block out an hour or so a day to read. Being a writer is a job, and reading helps train my brain in the right direction.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.”
― Karin Slaughter
“A book I would take with me to a desert island is ‘Paradise Lost,’ which I studied in college and hated so much by the end of the class that I never wanted to see it again.”
― Karin Slaughter
“I hate to badmouth any book or writer, because I know how it feels to be on the other end of that.”
― Karin Slaughter
“As a writer, I’ve always felt it’s my job to be extremely careful when writing about victims, especially women.”
― Karin Slaughter
“The familiar trope of the woman in peril doesn’t really interest me.”
― Karin Slaughter
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