We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls, #1)

by Karin Slaughter

Small men can’t handle grown women. They go after girls because most girls are pliable and desperate for outside approval. At that age, you’ll do almost anything for attention, even if it feels bad and you know it’s wrong.”

She also knew that everything that irritated her about her son—his stubbornness, his dogged loyalty, his blind sense of duty—were things that irritated her about herself.

“Every kid gets a different set of parents, even if they grow up in the same house.”

“He’s always struggled with contractions.” Emmy guessed turning into Myrna was the shit frosting on yet another shit cake.

“You can’t put a person in one box, Emmy Lou, especially when they get older. You’ve gotta judge them by the totality of their lives. You do bad shit when you’re young that you regret. You do good shit when you’re old that you hope makes up for it.

Virgil had joked about how raising girls could kill a man, but he had no idea how fucking hard it was to grow yourself into a woman.

“Denial gets a bad rap, but it can be very helpful on a temporary basis. The problem starts when you stay in denial, because trauma doesn’t go away. It stores itself in the body, particularly with children. The more they try to force it down, the more ways the body finds to push it back out.”