Black Widows Quotes

“Rachel thinks maybe Blake had some mental problems. Bipolar disorder, even. But that’s just Rachel. She always thinks of the nice reason why people do shitty things. Me, I’ve seen too much bad. You want my opinion, Blake just got carried away with his own power. All these women, fighting over him. It went to his head. Got addictive.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“This is bad. Mrs Nelson thinks she’s some warrior angel or something. Defending her family from temptation.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“Aunt Meg is there too, which seems especially indecent, since a few of the girls are young enough to be her daughters. Her low breasts and mottled skin, the wide spreading patch of wiry pubic hair. It all seems more horrible in contrast.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“Emily should have come talked to me,’ she says. ‘We’re sister-wives. Sealed together for eternity.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“person raised with severe emotional dysfunction, who has voluntarily recreated those antisocial conditions in her own family.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“You gonna go to jail for some honor-amongst-thieves bullshit? ’Cause I’m gonna level with you, Miss Keidis, you seem more intelligent than that.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“That could push someone with a background of trauma over the edge. And, luckily for you, the acting District Attorney will entertain reasoning of that nature. Psychological justifications.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“I’m hit by a lurching sense of shame. My father was known to his followers as ‘The Prophet’, and had over sixty wives at the time of his arrest. His favorite few lived in luxury in a big house, whilst the rest of us scraped and starved, crammed ten to a mouse-infested bed.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“This was part of the life Blake never told me about. I always figured Utah had no problem with polygamy. Never realized sayin’ the wrong thing could have us all arrested. I’m a worse criminal here than I was in Vegas.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“labor, and the women stayed home with twenty kids tugging at their skirts, and a Valium prescription. Welcome to Utah. Set your watch back fifty years.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“How are we expected to bring more souls into the Church,’ he demands, ‘when folks like you make us look like inbred hillbillies?”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“The husband I thought I knew so well had changed into a predator. A slavering animal thing. My embrace turned stilted, the kind words ashes in my mouth. And Emily, the second wife I’d invited into our home, had looked actively frightened at whatever she saw in my face.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“Makes sense, I guess. They found me in a prairie dress, barefoot on the ranch with no running water. They probably think I’m one of those cult victims.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“Don’t laugh, OK? But at the age of nineteen I didn’t know. Swear to God and hope to die. I had no idea what husbands and wives did together in bedrooms. It was quite a shock when I found out, yes siree.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“After our wedding, Blake drove me out of Salt Lake City and over to the ranch. I felt as though more and more little pieces of me were falling away with every mile we rode deeper into desert.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“He told me he’d never completed his mission and wanted to make amends by volunteering at rehab centers. I ripped him on that too, how us recovering addicts were low-rent converts, so desperate for a new life we’d believe anything. He laughed at that, and said I wasn’t all wrong. We laughed a lot, me and him.”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“In real life, the worst and most unthinkable things happen to good people.

[Rachel Nelson]”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows

“People say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Well, I can tell you, when a woman has a family, the way to her heart is through her dirty dishes. It's not easy to let God in when you've got a bunch of rug rats who need feeding and a trash can fill of diapers.

[Rachel Nelson]”
― Cate Quinn, Black Widows