Broken Quotes

“somewhere on earth, there was always a book with an answer in it, and the best way to find that answer was to read every book you could get your hands on.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“Broken:
Never underestimate the power of a shared history.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“Curiosity broke her earlier resolve. "Have you ever been tested?"
"No." He stood behind Sara, holding the camera in front so she could see. "Zoom here," he said, flicking the toggle.
"You could probably-"
"This is macro."
"Will-"
"Super macro." He kept talking over her until she gave up. "Here's where you adjust for color. This is light. Anti-shake. Red-eye." He clicked through the features like a photography instructor.
Sara Finally relented. "Why don't I point and you shoot?"
"All right." His back was stiff, and she could tell that he was irritated.
"I'm sorry I-"
"Please don't apologize."
Sara held his gaze for a few moments longer, wishing she could fix this. There was nothing to say if he wouldn't even let her apologize.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“He was playing chess and she was sucking at checkers.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“I found this." He put the briefcase on the table and opened the locks. She saw a stack of papers, an evidence bag with a red seal. He pulled a college notebook with a blue plastic cover from one of the pockets. Black fingerprint powder spotted the cover. "I tried to clean it up," he said, wiping the grime on the front of his sweater. "I'm sorry. It was in Allison's car and I..." He flipped through the pages, showing her the scrawled handwriting. "I can't," he said. "I just can't."
She realized that Will hadn't looked at her once since walking into the room. He had such an air of defeat about him, as if every word that came from his mouth caused him pain.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“He saw the towel in her hands. "I've got this."
"Let me help."
"I think you've helped enough." She thought he was going to leave it at that, but Will told her, "It's been worse today than usual."
"Stress is a contributing factor-when you get tired or if something emotional happens."
He scrubbed hard at the plate in his hands. Sara saw that he hadn't bothered to roll up his sleeves. The cuffs of his sweater were soaked. He said, "I've been trying to dig a new sewer line to my house. That's why my laundry is behind."
Sara had been expecting a non sequitur, but she'd hoped he could hold off for a few moments longer. "My father built this house with money from people who try to do their own plumbing.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“Tessa reached out and took her hand. “Can I tell you something?”
“As long as it’s not advice on chasing after a married man.”
She squeezed Sara’s hand. “I’m really in love with my husband.”
Sara gave a careful “Okay.”
“I know you think Lem is boring and too earnest and too self-righteous, and believe me, he can be all those
things, but a thousand times a day, I hear a song, or I think of something funny, or Daddy says one of his
stupid puns, and the first thing that comes into my head is ‘I want to tell Lem about this.’ And I know that
halfway around the world, he’s thinking the same thing.” She paused. “That’s what love is, Sara, when there are so many things about you that you only want one person in the world to know.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“The thing about having a bad reputation is that folks will believe just about anything people say about you.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“You hear about the two hats hanging on a peg by the door?’ She laughed. ‘No. What about them?’ ‘One says to the other, “You stay here. I’ll go on a head.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“That’s what love is, Sara, when there are so many things about you that you only want one person in the world to know.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“You gotta go through a special kind of hell or a special kind of love to change who you are inside.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“Any cop would tell you that the best way to get someone to talk was to be quiet. There was a natural, human inclination to fill silence with noise.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“And Jason was miserable. It radiated off him like the heat lamp over the french fries at McDonald’s.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“There had to be something awfully bad or awfully good to compel a person to turn their lives around. It was obvious to Will that Frank was past any life-changing revelations. Even without the oxygen tank, he smelled sick, like his body was already rotting. Will knew that there came a point in every person’s life when it was too late to change anything. All you could do was wait for death to make you inconsequential.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“a writer’s purpose should also be to write about what they want to know, and I want to know why and how violence changes victims, families, investigators, and communities. I suppose this curiosity came from growing up in Georgia during a particularly violent time in American life, no more so than in Atlanta, where a serial killer was abducting and murdering”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“Some of my earliest recollections of telling stories come from this time period. I remember quite clearly waking up in the middle of the night, sneaking into my older sister’s room, holding a flashlight under my chin and whispering, “Who’s killing the children?” She would start screaming, I would get scared by her screaming and start screaming myself, and then I would start crying, and then my parents would come in and punish my sister for making me so upset. Anyone who has a sibling will understand this dynamic. It’s never the baby’s fault.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“He meant the older blonde. ‘She looks local.’ She had the unmistakably trashy, bleach-blond air of a town-bred girl. Fake wallet aside, Allison Spooner appeared to be several rungs up on the social ladder. It didn’t jibe that the two would be friends. ‘Maybe Spooner had a drug problem?’ Lena guessed. Nothing crossed class lines like methamphetamine”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“By her senior year in high school, she had managed to stay away from the boys and the drinking and the meth that had ruined just about every girl her age in her small hometown of Elba, Alabama. She wasn’t going to end up being one of those soulless, washed-out girls who worked the night shift and smoked Kools because they were elegant. She wasn’t going to end up with three kids by three different men before she hit thirty. She wasn’t going to ever wake up one morning unable to open her eyes because some man’s fist had beaten them shut the night before. She wasn’t going to end up dead and alone in a hospital bed like her mother”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“Last year, the top ten pharmaceutical companies spent seventy-three billion dollars on advertising and less than twenty-nine billion on research. Tell me where their focus is.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“There are good days and bad days, and as long as there aren’t too many of either, you get along with your life fine.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“Eighty percent of custodial suicides are achieved by hanging. Prison inmates are seven times more likely to kill themselves than the general population.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“You hear about the two hats hanging on a peg by the door?” She laughed. “No. What about them?” “One says to the other, ‘You stay here. I’ll go on a head.’ ”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“With suicides, the victim is the murderer. The person upon whom the blame rests is also the person whose loss is felt most deeply. They are not around to take the recriminations for their death, the natural anger anyone feels when there is a loss. What the dead leave instead is a void that all the pain and sorrow in the world can never fill. Mother and father, sisters, brothers, friends and other relatives—all find themselves with no one to punish for their loss. And people always want to punish someone when a life is unexpectedly taken.”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“All you could do was wait for death to make you inconsequential. Frank”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken

“the great thing about lying was people believed it so long as the lie was close enough to the truth. Lena”
― Karin Slaughter, Broken