Lauren Beukes Quotes & Sayings

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to invent the news. — Lauren Beukes

I yank open the cutlery drawer to be confronted with an anomaly worse than emails from dead people or a man with a gun sitting on my bed. It's a large carving knife with a viciously serrated edge and two broken teeth. It's tarnished with rust. It's not mine. And neither is the china figurine of a kitten with one paw playfully raised, also stained with rust. But it's not rust. It's not rust at all. Perversely, the thought that flashes through my brain is "I can haz murder weapon?" I laugh out loud, a sobbing hiccup. — Lauren Beukes

Time heals. Crushes let up. Splinters work their way out. Doesn't mean they don't leave scars that itch. — Lauren Beukes

Twitter is amazing. I advertised for the position of research assistant on Twitter, and both of my researchers came from there. — Lauren Beukes

Memory is curated. All this paraphernalia you collect to ward off forgetting — Lauren Beukes

Finish the damn book. Nothing else matters. Stop second guessing yourself and write it through to the end. You don't know what you have until you've finished it. You don't know how to fix it until it's all down on the page. — Lauren Beukes

You'd think I would know better than to get involved with someone in my own department. But I'm really crap at resisting sexual tension. Oh, it's entertaining for a few weeks, the fuzzy sting that rushes down your vertebra to your groin when the eyes meet, the banter spiked with innuendo - then it becomes irritating, and you need to get it out of your system. Neutralize it by indulging it, which is fine, assuming you can both keep it tidy. — Lauren Beukes

Nothing is infinitely reducible. You can split an atom but you can't vaporize it. Stuff sticks around. It clings to you, even when it's broken. — Lauren Beukes

Visibility limits your imagination of the ocean only as far as you can see, ten metres, fifteen at a stretch. But it's only in the utter black that you can feel the true scale, the volume and weight of that gaping unknowable drift between continents. — Lauren Beukes

Fiction is about telling a good story, first and foremost. But of course, everything I'm interested in or angry about leaks into my writing, from art to violence against women. — Lauren Beukes

Nervousness hates a vacuum. 826 alligator. Nervousness will blurt right out with something, anything, to kill the silence. 839 alligator. Unless nervousness is kept busy doing something more useful. Like counting. 842 alligator. — Lauren Beukes

This is my idea of family, actually, a sticky morass you can't chew your way out of. — Lauren Beukes

I smile thinly, to make it clear that this will happen when hell turns into a family friendly summer resort. — Lauren Beukes

Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it's going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam. — Lauren Beukes

He always thought a muse should be sex on legs. — Lauren Beukes

Being a journalist, being exposed to the world, to social injustice, to intolerance, growing up here, under apartheid, benefitting from that, has all shaped who I am and what my passions are, and of course that's going to come through in my writing. — Lauren Beukes

What I love about collaborating is that you're working with other minds that work differently to yours. — Lauren Beukes

The biggest fairy tale is that justice works because it doesn't. — Lauren Beukes

The problem with snapshots is that they replace actual memories. You lock down the moment and it becomes all there is of it. — Lauren Beukes

She got up and put twenty dollars on the table to cover their coffees - way too much and, besides, he'd already paid at the counter - and walked out of his life, and didn't return his calls or texts or emails - all the ones he tried not to send. — Lauren Beukes

you're deluding yourself that you have some deep spiritual connection, like you didn't just read it on Wikipedia. There's a difference between tradition and culture. — Lauren Beukes

I'd rather be a happy Hooters waitress than a depressed out-of-work actor. — Lauren Beukes

There is aerated ink caked in the air vents from the printing presses that shake the whole building when they run. Some reporters have ink in their veins. The Sun-Times staff have ink in their lungs. Once in a while someone will complain to OSHA. — Lauren Beukes

The original stories are mined out, and all that's left is fool's gold. — Lauren Beukes

Life lesson: looks plus don't-give-a-fuck confidence mean you can have anything you want - any — Lauren Beukes

Poison shared is poison halved. Or maybe it just poisons everyone equally. — Lauren Beukes

The dream knows what they are waiting for, even if they don't themselves.
The end of everything.
The moment when it reveals its miracle boy and all the eyes will look and their seeing will be horror and glory and wonder and it will pierce the skin of the world, collapse dimensions, and open the doors and the work will breathe and dance in his shoes and the dream will be able to escape. — Lauren Beukes

Fear festers in the imagination. It's not fear's fault. That's just the way it's made. Nightmares breed. Allies become enemies. Subversives are everywhere. Paranoia justifies any persecution, and privacy is a luxury when the Reds have the bomb. — Lauren Beukes

Shakespeare would have it wrong these days. It's not the world that's the stage - it's social media, where you're trying to put on a show. The rest of your life is rehearsals, prepping in the wings to be fabulous online. — Lauren Beukes

No one said it would be pretty, yanking despair out of a woman. — Lauren Beukes

The genuinely powerful, unlike the Vuyos of this world, don't give a fuck about making an impression. — Lauren Beukes

We do this to ourselves. Society is a poisonous hamster wheel. — Lauren Beukes

I moved to New York for love, and it was a disaster, in 2000. And then I had American friends who had lived in South Africa, and they were in Chicago. They said, 'Come and spend some time with us, and we'll help you get over it.' — Lauren Beukes

World needs more angels, even plywood ones. — Lauren Beukes

He adds, wistfully, "I don't suppose you have syphilis, do you?"
"No."
"Pity. There's a study starting in Alabama that would have paid for all your medical care if you did. Although you'd have to be a Negro."
"I'm not that, either."
"Too bad." The doctor shrugs. — Lauren Beukes

She laughs, and that's really all he wanted. — Lauren Beukes

The problem with chemistry is that it tends to blow things up. And she is already a chain of reactions building up inside. — Lauren Beukes

You can map out a whole city according to the weight of memory, like pins on the homicide board tracking the killer's movements. But the connections get thicker and denser and more complicated all the time. — Lauren Beukes

I've seen so many screw-ups of representations of South Africa, and it makes me so angry every time. — Lauren Beukes

Everyone lives three versions of themselves; a public life, a private life and a secret life. — Lauren Beukes

Hell isn't other people, it's other parents. — Lauren Beukes

But she was the kind of girl you couldn't keep down. Unless you cut her up and caved in her skull. — Lauren Beukes

Can't reinvent the wheel. But you can put your own spin on it. — Lauren Beukes

There are only so many plots in the world. It's how they unfold that makes them interesting. — Lauren Beukes

The problem is he didn't just burn his bridges when he left New York, he blew them up and napalmed the river. — Lauren Beukes

I'm scared, Mom." ... "It's okay, honey. It's all right. That's the big secret, don't you know? Everyone is. All the time. — Lauren Beukes

I think Canada probably has an embargo on dicks." "That's why they're so nice. No dicks allowed. — Lauren Beukes

And he's sorry he ever doubted the House. She's the one. One of the ones. His shining girls. — Lauren Beukes

Being her friend was like going to a tropical island for a little fun in the sun, only to be kidnapped by terrorists. — Lauren Beukes

Sometime I think I'd like to torture him to death. Other times, I think I'd forgive him. Because that would be worse. — Lauren Beukes

Grown-up relationships are complicated. We got what we needed from each other. Passion. A safety net. Some kind of solace. It's lonely out there. But it ran its course. It was lovely while it lasted. But everything is finite. Life. Love. All this. Sadness too. Although that's harder to let go of than happiness. - Rachel Mazrachi — Lauren Beukes

Next time, can you ask him to bring cookies? I don't like to put up with that level of insane unless there's some kind of high-calorie compensation. — Lauren Beukes

He's already writing the catalog copy in his mind. Dehumanizing distortions, the obliteration of self, with a nod to Francis Bacon or Steven Cohen. Heck, David Bowie. There — Lauren Beukes

Dope don't have no sympathy, not for love or family, definitely not for fear. Put dope and the devil up against each other in the ring, and dope will win out. Every single time. — Lauren Beukes

Oh, but fine isn't everything!' Rachel exclaims and grabs her hands and pulls her into a stepping foxtrot over the paintings, twirling her round. 'Fine is the very definition of mediocrity. It's what's polite. It's what's socially acceptable. We need to live brighter and deeper than just fine, my darling! — Lauren Beukes

( ... ) everything is finite. Life. Love. All this.' ( ... ) 'Sadness too. Although that's harder to let go of than happiness. — Lauren Beukes

Everyone is broken. — Lauren Beukes

They burned this neighbourhood down in the early 1900s to prevent the spread of bubonic plague, and it occurs to me that they should consider doing it again, to purge the blight of well-meaning hipsters desperately trying to paint it rainbow — Lauren Beukes

You can bury your radical magazines and tear up your sexually perverse sketches and burn your sheets. But how do you erase who you are? — Lauren Beukes

Don't get too close buddy ' I warn Sloth. Unofficially there's a code of conduct but animals are still animals. And animals can be assholes too. — Lauren Beukes

Keep your options open, his parents told him, but they didn't tell him that growing older is about your options shutting down, one by one. — Lauren Beukes

Florrie smiles with unmoderated joy, because she can't see that most people bank their happiness like it's something you might run out of — Lauren Beukes

Explosions and fighting robots and shit. What's that got to do with the heart? — Lauren Beukes

Fashion is only different skins for different flavours of you. — Lauren Beukes

You have to do the cutting yourself, to let out the pain inside. Getting someone else to slice you up is cheating. — Lauren Beukes

There are patterns because we try to find them. A desperate attempt at order because we can't face the terror that it might all be random. — Lauren Beukes

This is the Detroit I want to write about," he says, feeling urbane as fuck. "Tattoo seances and nutty street art and text-message millionaires. People don't even know this is happening."
"Of course we know it's happening, shithead," Anorexic Thor says. "You don't know it's happening. — Lauren Beukes

I really wanted to believe that there were these magic celestial bodies that would direct my life, tell me what to do, and it turns out it's not stars, it's some bits of screwy DNA. I'm just meat with faulty programming. — Lauren Beukes

In the forest, they did things to drive us mad. Muti. Drugs. Rape. Killing Games. ( ... ) God is not in the forest. Maybe He is too busy looking after sports teams or worrying about teenagers having sex before marriage. I think they take up a lot of His time. — Lauren Beukes

In our patakis, our folk myths, we believe that we come to the world with a destiny we picked for ourselves in Arun. Obatala creates the human body, but you have to get your head from the potter who molds them out of clay in his warehouse. On a good day he makes beautiful heads, but sometimes he gets drunk and makes a bad head. It's a divine defect. There's no way to tell from the outside, but once you've chosen your head, you have to live your destiny. — Lauren Beukes

Affectionate violence. For when a hug just won't do. That's a Hallmark card for you. — Lauren Beukes

Only other people can make you feel real. — Lauren Beukes

Shining stars linked together through time. A constellation of murder. — Lauren Beukes

Fresh starts don't come with expired relationships attached — Lauren Beukes

It's hard to get justice in the real world. It's possible in fiction. — Lauren Beukes

Six foot eight and all asshole. — Lauren Beukes

If you want to kiss me again, then shut the fuck up and stop bleeding to death — Lauren Beukes

A yellow dog barks at him from behind a chain-link fence, all possessive ferocity and no damn balls. Just like the gang-banger kids. They think a pistol equals cojones. That's why they tuck them into their pants. — Lauren Beukes

But since Sloth I've been so monogamous I make the demonstration banana that AIDS educators use to show how to put on a condom, look slutty. — Lauren Beukes

That's all you got? 'The people'? Fuck you." He blinks. "Isn't there supposed to be a good cop?" "We're short staffed. — Lauren Beukes

Don't let anyone tell you that Apartheid has nothing to do with South Africa now. Those roots run deep and tangled and we'll be tripping over them for many generations to come. — Lauren Beukes

Fear makes you ugly. — Lauren Beukes

They used to put people in stocks to shame them in public. Now you just need a wi-fi connection. On the internet, humiliation lives forever — Lauren Beukes

Good manners will do that; turn a situation around. You got to treat people like people. — Lauren Beukes

The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own. — Lauren Beukes

With the amount of sugar I'm doing, she's lucky I can remember the colour of my eyes without a mirror. — Lauren Beukes

in his memory, Instagrams really, because — Lauren Beukes

This is the way the world is now. Everything is public. You have to find other people who understand. — Lauren Beukes

So are you an inmate or a rubbernecker?" she asks.
"Rubbernecker," I answer without hesitation. "You?"
"I'm a screw. Or on staff, anyway. Used to be an inmate. Repeat offender. Crimes against my body. Puking sickness followed by heroin, which led to more puking sickness." I'd be surprised at her forthrightness, but that's addicts for you. The twelve steps crack 'em open and then they can't shut up. — Lauren Beukes

A gut wound will drop a man in his tracks every time. Harper always found it more personal than bullets, getting right up into someone. It made the war bearable. — Lauren Beukes

I did a lot of research on real serial killers, and they're not Hannibal Lecters. They're cruel men who are given the opportunity to do something terrible, and a lot of the time it's about impotence. They feel powerless in the real world. — Lauren Beukes

I hate golf. It's the genteel version of seal-clubbing, only not as much fun. — Lauren Beukes

Like Humpty Dumpty. At some point you have to pick up the pieces. Or walk away. Don't look back. Fuck the king's horses. — Lauren Beukes

WWCD. What would George Clooney do? — Lauren Beukes

I've always loved Japanese legend, anime and manga. — Lauren Beukes

It doesn't escape him that the rock holding it up is the perfect fit for his fist. Or how easily one of those needle spokes would slide right through the girl's eye like Jell-O. — Lauren Beukes

She would disappear folded like origami into her own dreams — Lauren Beukes