Benjamin Stevenson > Quotes

“Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it's who you'd spill it for.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“But I promised to be reliable, not competent”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“If a killer is ever revealed and your ‘percentage read’ isn’t at least in the high eighties, they cannot be the real killer; there is simply too much of the book still to be read.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“Anger is as much an heirloom as any Rolex.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Owe, owe, owe. You use that word so much. A family is not a credit card.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“It’s not the writing that tells the story, it’s the reading.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Call me a reliable narrator. Everything I tell you will be the truth, or, at least, the truth as I knew it to be at the time that I thought I knew it.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“You can tell a lot about someone from whether they can handle an uncomfortable silence. If they ride it out or snap it off.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“This works to spoil films too: the highest-profile actor with the fewest lines is always the villain, and a sudden wide-shot of a character crossing a road means they are about to be hit by a car. A good author must not only wrong-foot the reader within the narrative, they must do it within the form of the novel itself. There are clues baked into the very object.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“Every basic task starts to feel like a decision, and that becomes so draining that you end up unable to make any of them.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“know some authors are incapable of having a woman throw up without it being a clue to a pregnancy. These same authors seem to think nausea is the only indication of childbearing, not to mention their belief that vomit shoots out the woman’s mouth within hours of plot-convenient fertilisation. By some authors, I mean male ones.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“But a bad person who thinks they’re a good one—now, that’s what got him into trouble.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“...my editor had crossed out my first go at this sentence and written Hypo=cold, Hyper=hot in the margin, in that helpful yet smug voice editors are born with, wishing to both correct you and impart their correctness upon you at the same time.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“The wind was cruel; it found every crevasse in my clothes, invaded and patted me down like I owed it money.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“One day you’ll realize family isn’t about whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let’s get started.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“I'm sorry about before," I said. Seeing as we were shoulder to shoulder, I spoke outwards, lobbing my apology into the void of the mountain. It's the only way blokes know how to show humility, by pretending we're at a urinal.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Silence is a tap left running: it fills and fills until it overflows and becomes insurmountable.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“You read people’s books, and you think you know them. They’re having a conversation with you for hundreds of pages, and there’s an intimacy there that you develop on your own.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Family is gravity.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“I am normally resolute in declining any invitation that comes with an Excel spreadsheet attached.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“We are seven chapters away from the next death.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Mystery writers these days always have to find a way to take away their crime-solvers’ phones because otherwise the reader sits there the whole time thinking, Google it!”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“There is only one plot hole you could drive a truck through.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God? —Membership oath of the Detection Club, 1930, a secret society of mystery writers including Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, and Dorothy L. Sayers”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“You want the difference between pulp and literature? Between a real writer and just a writer? I’ll tell you: adverbs.” “Adverbs?” “You use too many of them,” he said, derisively.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“one of the kindest things you can do to someone is to cut them off.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“I was tempted to type in “How do I call my uncle an idiot but make it sound constructive?” But I didn’t think AI would have the plethora of curse words I required.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Just look at how they’ve treated you. And you still think you owe them? One day you’ll realise family isn’t about whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone