Ann Rule Quotes

I always say that bad women are fewer than men, but when you get one, they're fascinating because they're so rotten. ~ Ann Rule

All of my books now come from readers' ideas. ~ Ann Rule

And, like all the others, I have been manipulated to suit Ted's needs. I don't feel particularly embarrassed or resentful about that. I was one of many, all of us intelligent, compassionate people who had no real comprehension of what possessed him, what drove him obsessively. ~ Ann Rule

Have you ever heard the expression: Walk a mile in my shoes, and then judge me? And write your own books. ~ Ann Rule

In all human endeavors that deal with what is unthinkable, too terrible to be dealt with squarely, we turn to what is familiar and regimented: funerals, wakes, and even wars. Now, in this trial, we had gone beyond our empathy with the pain of the victims and our niggling realization that the defendant was a fragmented personality. He knew the rules, he even knew a great deal about the law, but he did not seem to be cognizant of what was about to happen to him. He seemed to consider himself irrefragable. And what was about to happen to him was vital for the good of society. I could not refute that. It had to be, but it seemed hollow that none of us understood that his ego, our egos and the rituals of the courtroom itself, the jokes and the nervous laughter were veiling the gut reactions that we should all be facing. We were all on "this railroad train running … ~ Ann Rule

I ended that letter, 'There is nothing in this life that is a complete tragedy - nothing - try to remember that.' Looking back, I wonder at my naiveté. Some things in life ARE complete tragedies. Ted Bundy's story may well be one of them. ~ Ann Rule

There is an odd synchronicity in the way parallel lives veer to touch one another, change direction, and then come close again and again until they connect and hold for whatever it was that fate intended to happen. ~ Ann Rule

Some people hate the smell of hospitals. I hate the smell of jails and prisons, all the same: stale cigarette smoke, Pine-Sol, urine, sweat, and dust. ~ Ann Rule

Try to open up your mind a little, and move away from rigid opinions of what people should do and be - unless you have been there. ~ Ann Rule

would be terrified that she would be found out. She could be so frightened, perhaps, that she might blurt out a confession. No one was leaning on her. To a burdened conscience, silence and solicitude can be more threatening than interrogation. ~ Ann Rule

For a while, people couldn't understand why I'd find them so fascinating, but I'd rather go to a trial than to a Broadway play. Now that we have Court TV, they see what I mean. ~ Ann Rule

I had long since managed a degree of detachment when dealing with photographs from homicide cases. They no longer upset me as they once did, although I make it a point not to dwell on them. By the time I stood in Shirley Lewis's office, I had seen thousands of body pictures. I had seen pictures of Kathy Devine and Brenda Baker in Thurston County, but that was months before it was known there was a "Ted." Of course, there were no bodies to photograph in the other Washington cases, and I had had no access to Colorado or Utah pictures. Now, I was staring down at huge color photographs of the damage done to girls young enough to be my daughters - at pictures of damage alleged to be the handiwork of a man I thought I knew. That man who only minutes before had smiled the same old grin at me, and shrugged as if to say, "I have no part of this." It hit me with a terrible sickening wave. I ran to the ladies' room and threw up. ~ Ann Rule

Choices are like dominoes, one tumbling against the next and then the next until events go out of human control. ~ Ann Rule

Some writers hate to go to trials, but I love trials. ~ Ann Rule

As I write these recollections of women who survived, I hope my readers are taking careful note of why they did.
They screamed.
They fought.
They slammed doors in a stranger's face.
They ran.
They doubted glib stories.
They spotted flaws in those stories.
They were lucky enough to have someone step up and protect them. ~ Ann Rule

He was a shadow man, fighting to survive in a world that was never made for him. ~ Ann Rule

I watched from somewhere up above and saw the troopers lift the car off someone. Then I saw that it was me lying there. I wasn't afraid, and I didn't feel any pain - not until I woke up in the hospital three days later. Since then, I've known that the soul doesn't die, only the body, and I've never been afraid. ~ Ann Rule

I always want to give the victim a voice. ~ Ann Rule

Lazy people tend not to take chances, but express themselves by tearing down other's work. ~ Ann Rule

You cannot step over a mountain," she told me, "but if you step over pebble by pebble, you'll look back and the mountain will be behind you. ~ Ann Rule

I want to warn potential victims. Many of them are women, and many of them are battered women. It's a cause for me. When I look back, though, so many of the books I've written are about wives who just couldn't get away. ~ Ann Rule

To be agreeable, all that is necessary is to take an interest in other persons and in other things, to recognize that other people as a rule are much like one's self, and thankfully to admit that diversity is a glorious feature of life. ~ Frank Arthur Swinnerton

Whatever you think matters - doesn't. Follow this rule, and you will add decades to your life. ~ Roger Rosenblatt

To every rule there is an exception - and an idiot ready to demonstrate it. Don't be the one! ~ Vera Nazarian

His thoughts were wheeling and dipping like the gulls over the estuary, groping for an explanation, feeling at last he was making sense of what lie behind Walden's death... ~ Ann Cleeves

We are to count on this fact that we are dead to sin's rule, that we can stand up to it and say no. Therefore we are to guard our bodies so that sin does not reign in us.
So we see that God has made provision for our holiness. Through Christ He has delivered us from sin's reign so that we can now resist sin. But the responsibility for resisting is ours. ~ Jerry Bridges

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost. The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him, and the three major classifications are based on the method each object uses to achieve its purpose. As a general rule, any object capable of breaking down at the moment when it is most needed will do so. ~ Russell Baker

And yet, every day, Brian gathers his sister's long hair into a beautiful plait, and just the sound of his voice is enough to calm her when she is uncomfortable and frightened. I think that tells me his real story. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

I was never happier than on the nights we stayed home, lying on the living room rug. We talked about classes and poetry and politics and sex. Neither of us were in love with the Iowa Writers' Workshop, but it didn't really matter because we had no place else to go. What we had was the little home we made together, our life in the ugly green duplex. We lived next door to a single mother named Nancy Tate who was generous in all matters. She would drive us to the grocery store and give us menthol cigarettes and come over late at night after her son was asleep to sit in our kitchen and drink wine and talk about Hegel and Marx. Iowa City in the eighties was never going to be Paris in the twenties, but we gave it our best shot. ~ Ann Patchett

Never let them see your fear ... it's rule number one. And it's not that I'm afraid. No, I'm not.
I don't fear death.
I've already died too many times before.
I'm a cat with nine lives and I'm already on number twelve. I'm living on borrowed time. When death wants to take me, it'll take me. ~ J.M. Darhower

You know, whenever you're shooting a film there's different obstacles and challenges, whether it be from the makeup artist getting fired that you liked or whatever - the one that did the makeup the way you wanted. There's always stuff that changed, like the DP leaving the set, and there's a new guy in there, and the way he does lighting isn't the same as the last guy. ~ Ja Rule

We tiptoe around like we're the Frank family and the Gestapo is downstairs. The baby monitor is in our room, and the unspoken rule is that when the kids go down, so do we. So at seven P.M., I'm in bed waiting for the sandman to come. I can't watch TV, because the noise may wake up the kids; I can't listen to music with my iPod earbuds, because then I can't hear the monitor; and I can't have sex, because that could wake up Janice. ~ Billy Crystal

The city of man requires idolatry. All must bow before the symbol of its total claim. Religion is tolerated when it supports the claims of the state, party, the institutional hierarchy. But those who say, "We must obey God rather than men" are always condemned as traitors or exiled as aliens. Yet the calling of Christ's kingdom no only separates a man from the world, it also sends him to the world. In this time of the kingdom we are pilgrims, for the mountain of Christ's rule is the heavenly Zion; but in the task of the kingdom we are ambassadors, for we have been sent by the King to proclaim his terms of peace to his rebellious realm. ~ Edmund P. Clowney

Everyone, from almost every tradition, agrees on five things. Rule 1: We are all family. Rule 2: You reap exactly what you sow, that is, you cannot grow tulips from zucchini seeds. Rule 3: Try to breathe every few minutes or so. Rule 4: It helps beyond words to plant bulbs in the dark of winter. Rule 5: It is immoral to hit first. [pp.313-314] ~ Anne Lamott

Your health is what you make of it. Everything you do and think either adds to the vitality, energy and spirit you possess or takes away from it. ~ Ann Wigmore

I don't think I understand that," Meg insisted. "How can you lust yourself into oblivion. "
"Oh, easily," Ekaterina answered. "The lust is for things, possessions. The weapon turns on the nature of possessions, the fact that every possession you own consumes a part of you. Tools, instruments, if they are more than conceits, these things do not defy the rule but they are exceptional enough they don't activate the weapon.
Consequently, the mission of these alleged scientists is to create generalized lust, a frenzied lust for things unconnected to any sense of utility. ~ Robert Stikmanz

Mario'd fallen in love with the first Madam Psychosis programs because he felt like he was listening to someone sad read out loud from yellow letters she'd taken out of a shoebox on a rainy P.M, stuff about heartbreak and people you loved dying and U.S. woe, stuff that was real. It is increasingly hard to find valid art that is about stuff that is real in this way. The older Mario gets, the more confused he gets about the fact that everyone at E.T.A. over the age of about Kent Blott finds stuff that's really real uncomfortable and they get embarrassed. It's like there's some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn't happy. ~ David Foster Wallace

Dandamis then looked at Alexander with pity. 'You have nothing I want,' he said. 'Once, you might have been a passable philosopher, but now you value no opinion save your own. You wander because you cannot bear to be still-you conquer because you cannot bear to rule. ~ Christian Cameron

God is in desperate search for those sons he could send to the world of sports to rule and manage it for him ~ Sunday Adelaja

In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear. ~ Ann Voskamp

Winning a war is the easy part. All it takes is brawn. Maintaining your rule afterward is the real test. ~ Natasha Ngan

Ann Demeulemeester is an adult brand now, with its own identity and legacy that is able to continue growing without me. ~ Ann Demeulemeester

I have come far, but not far enough. It is still a man's world. ~ Lesley Ann Warren

A joyful life is when we listen to the desires of our heart and mind, and we never forget to have a chuckle or two, a day. ~ Jo-Ann L. Tremblay

Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid ~ Terry Goodkind

As a general rule. it's a comfort issue, literally and metaphorically. And intimacy issue. It's a big step, putting on foreign underwear. Like betrayal, or emigration. ~ Lee Child

How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn't forget? ~ Ann Brashares

I am a good, strong word giver; I am a jealous guard of my own secrets. Freedom is the rule; I am hungry for one good thing I can do. ~ Rachel Corrie

When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this. ~ Howard Zinn

I was not allowed to take spherical trigonometry because I'd sprained my ankle. Because I'd sprained my ankle, I had an incomplete in gym, phys ed. And the rule was that if you had an incomplete in anything, you were not allowed to take an overload. ~ William Shockley

Modern wars as a rule have been caused by the commercial and financial rivalry and intrigues of the capitalist interests in the different countries. Whether they have been frankly waged as wars of aggression or have been hypocritically represented as wars of "defense," they have always been made by the [ruling] classes and fought by The Masses. Wars bring wealth and power to the ruling classes, and suffering, death, and demoralization to the workers. ~ John Nichols

Those who can sit in a chair, undistracted for hours, mastering subjects and creating things will rule the world - while the rest of us frantically and futilely try to keep up with texts, tweets, and other incessant interruptions. ~ Arianna Huffington

It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order. ~ Ann Beattie

I think eventually I want to become a teacher, like my father wanted to be, and hopefully positively influence the next generation. ~ Ann Curry

The 'science' in 'science fiction' isn't just physics and engineering. It can also be linguistics, anthropology, and psychology. ~ Ann Leckie

There are enough fossils showing distinctive features to rule out the possibility these are unusual or aberrant modern humans ~ Chris Stringer

The success of totalitarian movements among the masses meant the end of two illusions of democratically ruled countries in general and of European nation-states and their party system in particular. The first was that the people in its majority had taken an active part in government and that each individual was in sympathy with one's own or somebody else's party. On the contrary, the movements showed that the politically neutral and indifferent masses could easily be the majority in a democratically ruled country, that therefore a democracy could function according to rules which are actively recognized by only a minority. The second democratic illusion exploded by the totalitarian movements was that these politically indifferent masses did not matter, that they were truly neutral and constituted no more than the inarticulate backward setting for the political life of the nation. Now they made apparent what no other organ of public opinion had ever been able to show, namely, that democratic government had rested as much on the silent approbation and tolerance of the indifferent and inarticulate sections of the people as on the articulate and visible institutions and organizations of the country. Thus when the totalitarian movements invaded Parliament with their contempt for parliamentary government, they merely appeared inconsistent: actually, they succeeded in convincing the people at large that parliamentary majorities were spurious and did not necessarily correspond to the ~ Hannah Arendt

With journalism, films always have to be to do with some personal statement of your own. As a general rule, I resist that. In the States, a question that kept coming up was this: 'How can you, as a man, talk about three women?' ~ Stephen Daldry

Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done.. almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world.. or to repair the devastation we've already wrought. ~ Daniel Quinn