Serial Quotes

Me? I was obsessed with serial killers. More specifically, I was obsessed with the idea of female serial killers. Hear the phrase serial killer, and most of us probably picture a man. It's not surprising - let's be real, men are responsible for at least ninety-two percent of the evil in the world. For centuries, women have been socially programmed to be the nurturers, after all - the protectors, the emotional bridges - so when we hear of a woman who takes life instead of creating it, it's instinctively shocking. ~ Christina Lauren

Sometimes women's attraction to true crime is dismissed as trashy and voyeuristic (because women are vapid!). Sometimes it is unquestioningly celebrated as feminist (because if women like something, then it must be feminist!). And some argue that women read about serial killers to avoid becoming victims. This is the most flattering theory - and also, it seemed to me, the most incomplete. By presuming that women's dark thoughts were merely pragmatic, those thoughts are drained of their menace. True crime wasn't something we women at CrimeCon were consuming begrudgingly, for our own good. We found pleasure in these bleak accounts of kidnappings and assaults and torture chambers, and you could tell by how often we fell back on the language of appetite, of bingeing, of obsession. A different, more alarming hypothesis was the one I tended to prefer: perhaps we liked creepy stories because something creepy was in us. ~ Rachel Monroe

New York always brings out the serial killer in me. It's a great city to kill in. The best. You've got something like fifteen million people living cheek by jowl, and most of them couldn't give a damn about anyone else. No one wants to get involved. No one cares. ~ Stephen Leather

I want something that'll give me the stamina of a young werewolf, the vision of a shaman, the thoughts of a serial killer and the gentleness of a hungry vampire bat. ~ Warren Ellis

Why so many other stab wounds if any of the first five did the trick?"
"He, or they were just having fun. ~ Kenneth Eade

In Ted Bundy's defense," I string together four words I never thought I'd utter in all of my life, "I don't think anyone ever asked him if he was a serial killer. You know, not when they were first getting friendly with him. ~ Winter Renshaw

Is this where you reveal you're secretly a serial killer and you're taking me to where you're going to bury my body in a shallow grave? ~ Lolita Lane

Before people figured out I was funny, I got cast quite a bit as either a rapist or serial killer or the guy who catches those people. ~ Nick Offerman

Outside of dumb luck, the number one way serial killers are caught is through the help of the public. ~ Pat Brown

I deserve, certainly, the most extreme punishment society has and society deserves to be protected from me and from others like me, that's for sure. ~ Ted Bundy

Psychologist: "This, ah, is a new sort of, ah, psychopathology that we're only now beginning to, ah, understand. These, ah, super-serial killers have no, ah, 'type' but, ah, rather consider everyone to be their 'type.'"
Gramma: "Did you hear that? Your daddy's a superhero! ~ Barry Lyga

Not all demons are born to the dark. And not all angels seek the light. Sometimes our circumstance demands a fusion of both. There is no good and evil. Only the time spent between both heaven and hell, where we find our peace. And love. Even the vilest of monsters deserve to be loved. ~ Trisha Wolfe

I've only ever done out-and-out serious roles. I've played, like, five serial killers. ~ Andrew-Lee Potts

The stories we read in books, what's presented to us as being interesting - they have very little to do with real life as it's lived today. I'm not talking about straight-up escapism, your vampires, serial killers, codes hidden in paintings, and so on. I mean so-called serious literature. A boy goes hunting with his emotionally volatile father, a bereaved woman befriends an asylum seeker, a composer with a rare neurological disorder walks around New York, thinking about the nature of art. People looking back over their lives, people having revelations, people discovering meaning. Meaning, that's the big thing. The way these books have it, you trip over a rock you'll find some hidden meaning waiting there. Everyone's constantly on the verge of some soul-shaking transformation. And it's - if you'll forgive my language - it's bullshit. Modern people live in a state of distraction. They go from one distraction to the next, and that's how they like it. They don't transform, they don't stop to smell the roses, they don't sit around recollecting long passages of their childhood - Jesus, I can hardly remember what I was doing two days ago. My point is, people aren't waiting to be restored to some ineffable moment. They're not looking for meaning. That whole idea of the novel - that's finished. ~ Paul Murray

She stared at me "You have a message," she said. "On you machine."
I looked over at my answering machine. Sure enough, the light was blinking. The woman really was a detective.
"It's some girl," La Guerta said. "She sounds kind of sleepy and happy. You got a girlfriend, Dexter?" there was a strange hint of a challenge in her voice.
"You know how it is," I said. "Women today are so forward, and when you are as handsome as I am they absolutely fling themselves at your head." Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words; as I said it I couldn't help thinking of the woman's head flung at me not so long ago.
"Watch out," La Guerta said. "Sooner or later one of them will stick." I had no idea what she thought that meant, but it was a very unsettling image.
"I'm sure you're right," I said. "Until then, carpe diem."
"What?"
"It's Latin," I said. "It means, complain in the daylight. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Eric Steele was strapped in and rubbing a rag over his father's 1911. Demo had brought the pistol with the rest of Steele's
gear on board the C-17. In the cockpit, the pilot pushed the throttle forward, shoving Steele back in his seat. He barely
noticed because he was thinking about the first time his father let him hold the pistol. It had felt so heavy in his hands
back then.


So much I never got to ask him.

He ran his thumb over the spot where the serial number should have been. It was silver and all traces of the file marks were
smoothed out by years of use. The pistol was one of John Moses Browning's masterpieces, the same design that the American
infantryman had carried in the Battle of Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Korea, and Vietnam. It was the only thing he had to remind
him of the father he never really knew.


Steele had made the pistol his own by modifying it to shoot 9mm, adding a threaded barrel, and installing suppressor sights,
which were taller than the factory ones. It was his gun now, and he slipped it away before taking an amphetamine tablet out
of his pocket and downing it with a sip of water. ~ Sean Parnell

One day soon, you'll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley, in Aloha, Oregon.

The doorbell rings.

No side gates are left open. You're long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell.

This is how it ends for you.

"You'll be silent forever, and I'll be gone in the dark," you threatened a victim once.

Open the door. Show us your face.

Walk into the light. ~ Michelle McNamara

I am not trying to say that a passport photo of himself can cure a gloomy man of a gloom for which there is no ground; for true gloom is by nature groundless; such gloom, ours at least, can be traced to no identifiable cause, and with its almost riotous gratuitousness this gloom of ours attained a pitch of intensity that would yield to nothing. If there was any way of making friends with our gloom, it was through the photos, because in these serial snapshots we found an image of ourselves which, though not exactly clear, was - and that was the essential - passive and neutralized. They gave us a kind of freedom in our dealings with ourselves; we could drink beer, torture our blood sausages, make merry and play. We bent and folded the pictures, and cut them up with little scissors we carried about with us for this precise purpose. We juxtaposed old and new pictures, made ourselves one-eyed or three-eyed, put noses on our ears, made our exposed right ears into organs of speech or silence, combined chins and foreheads. And it was not only each with his own likeness that we made these montages; Klepp borrowed features from me and I from him: thus we succeeded in making new, and we hoped, happier creatures. ~ Gunter Grass

I'm currently between assignments and was looking for a change. I heard there was work in Nashville and it seemed like a good place to start over. So here I am stuck in the freezing cold with a ... serial killer. Has the making for a great horror movie, huh? (Leta) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

All what stuck in my mind was what the judge had said, and that was during the assault there must have been some passive co-operation on my part. Added to the fact that the Wests had only been fined £25 each for each of the charges against them, a total of £100 was all that I was worth. ~ Stephen Richards

I think it's interesting that when you play a lesbian, people ask you if you're a lesbian, but if you play a serial killer, nobody asks you if you're a serial killer. ~ Nora Dunn

I would cook it, and look at the pictures and masturbate. ~ Jeffrey Dahmer

Looking back on it, I realize that it might not have been the completely right thing to do. Unfortunately, the rental market in San Francisco sometimes requires that you overlook trivial things like having a serial killer for a landlord. ~ Darren McKeeman

I'm not interested in serial dating; I'd honestly rather be single. ~ Tamsin Egerton

The novel puts an ad in the personals:
Serial monogamist seeks same.
6x9, 220 pages. Hobbies: candlelit
tension, tasteful gore. Weakness:
occasional flashbacks. Enjoys long
walks on the beach to search for
bodies washing up on shore. ~ Erin Murphy

He stared at Avery's socks and felt an odd sense of wonder. Socks were so normal. So mundane. How could someone who pulled on socks in the morning be a serial killer? Socks were not hard or dangerous. Socks were funny; foot mittens, that's what socks were. They made a knobbly hinge of your toes and became comical sock-puppets. Surely anyone who wore socks could not truly be a threat to him or anyone else? ~ Belinda Bauer

Whose Daddy's Little Girl Now? ~ Lauren Bradshaw

The serial arsonist is the most difficult to apprehend because the evidence is burned up. ~ Joseph Wambaugh

One of the things that I discovered in my research is that some serial killers build an ultimate reality around themselves that they believe in, 100%. ~ James Purefoy

Serial murder may, in fact, be a much older phenomenon than we realize. The stories and legends that have filtered down about witches and werewolves and vampires may have been a way of explaining outrages so hideous that no one in the small and close-knit towns of Europe and early America could comprehend the perversities we now take for granted. Monsters had to be supernatural creatures. They couldn't be just like us. ~ John E. Douglas

My first book was called 'Buried Dreams,' about a serial-killer, which was probably about ten years ahead of the serial-killer curve. It was a national bestseller, but it was three years of living in the sewer of this guy's mind. ~ Tim Cahill

Nobody knows if Zidane is an angel or demon. He smiles like Saint Teresa and grimaces like a serial killer. ~ Zinedine Zidane

We assume people we know can't be serial killers. ~ Pat Brown

People which deserv support are people like
Vsauce (A guy who I don't know how to describe... but as overall awesome character.)
Rob Dyke (How he won't deserv one support or many?)... what he is doing is blowing mind it's about Anatomy of Murder and Serial KIllers files... that's crazy. And the best of all you can find a lot of information about many prisoners. ~ Deyth Banger

Traits that are common among psychopathic serial killers
a grandiose sense of self-worth, persuasiveness, superficial charm, ruthlessness, lack of remorse, and the manipulation of others
are also shared by politicians and world leaders. ~ Kevin Dutton

The accepted definition of a serial killer is a person who kills at least three times with a cooling off period in between his murders. ~ Pat Brown

Corporatism trying to redeem itself through charity is akin to a serial killer offering to pay a fine for his crimes. ~ Dean Cavanagh

I've been a serial husband, and I've done it badly every time. ~ Steve Earle

I've been keeping in stuff worse than that for more than twenty years."
- what the serial killer said to me. Based the antagonist in my novel on him. He's dead now. ~ Kristi Belcamino

Ugly people kill people all the time. But when pretty people did, it got attention. ~ Chelsea Cain

For what it was worth he already knew he resembled a pissed off serial killer most of the time, he was completely fine about it, it kept people away. ~ V. Theia

Some of the best movies made about crime are those where the crime solver can get inside the head of the serial killer, and those are the techniques we use in C.S.I. ~ Paul Guilfoyle

Within just about every serial predator, there are two warring elements: A feeling of grandiosity, specialness, and entitlement, together with deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness and a sense that they have not gotten the breaks in life that they should ~ John E. Douglas

If the name or shape weren't odd enough, the McRib has a strange "here today, gone tomorrow" existence. Like a serial deadbeat dad, the McRib arrives with great fanfare only to skip town without warning. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Begum Para, did I say? Not the Begum Para? The saucy heroine of the silver screen? And why not? This remarkable lady had dropped in from Pakistan to play the part of my grandmother in Shubhadarshini's serial Ek Tha Rusty, based on stores of my childhood. ~ Ruskin Bond

Serial killers were hopped-up eyeball fuckers and ravaged inner children. They were scary in the moment and as dismissible as an empty box of popcorn. ~ James Ellroy

He was a beautiful pagan god with the voice of a serial killer, but that didn't make him any less god like. It just meant rather than dying in some dank basement or isolated cabin, I'd die bound on an altar as part of some gruesome sacrificial rite. Exsanguinating while he stood over my naked body with my blood dripping from an obsidian blade...Angelina Martin ~ Candace Vianna

That's where the public like their artists - exposed, trousers down, arse up, doing a long stretch among serial killers, and shitting in front of strangers. That'll teach 'em to think their talent makes them better than mediocre no-brain tax-paying wage slaves like us. ~ Hanif Kureishi

I think of myself as a fairly logical, scientific and somewhat reserved person. Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner who appears in five of my books, is me. Almost everything I use in describing her, from her taste in wine to her biographical data, is taken from my own family. Except I don't have a serial killer as a mother! ~ Tess Gerritsen

I've noticed that some people are serial goal setters, rather than habit formers. ~ Gretchen Rubin

Serial killer aren't creative."
"Watch a little Dexter and get back to me on that. ~ Cath Crowley

All serial murders are not sexually-based. There are many other motivations for serial murders including anger, thrill, financial gain, and attention seeking." It became clear from our research that financial gain was a huge motivator for Gosnell. ~ Ann McElhinney

There's nothing sweeter than that which is forbidden. ~ Kelly Oram

For a brief review of our history to date shows us in a very singular role:that of serial killers. ~ Mark Lynas

Gosnell is African American, and there is a persistent myth that serial killers are all white men. But that's not true. There are serial killers from all ethnic groups: White, African American, Hispanic, and Asian. ~ Ann McElhinney

And Grandma spooned in some beans. "We need one of them psychics," Grandma said. "I saw on television where you can call them up, and they know everything. They find dead people all the time. I saw a couple of them on a talk show, and they were saying how they help the police with these serial murder cases. I was watching that show, and I was thinking that if I was a serial murderer I'd chop the bodies up in little pieces so those psychics wouldn't have such an easy job of it. Or maybe I'd drain all the blood out of the body and collect it in a big bucket. Then I'd bury a chicken, and I'd take the victim's blood and make a trail to the chicken. Then the psychic wouldn't know what to make of it when the police dug up a chicken." Grandma helped herself to the gravy boat and poured gravy over her pot roast. "Do you think that'd work?" Everyone but Grandma paused with forks in midair. ~ Janet Evanovich

Some people are serial entrepreneurs and want to just move on to the next thing. They just want to clean the slate and start from scratch. I feel that sometimes, too, and the way that we do that here is we build things inside Shutterstock: we launch new products all the time. ~ Jon Oringer

They're daring me to kill again. ~ Aileen Wuornos

Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer. ~ Tess Gerritsen

He would have been handsome - in a serial-killer kind of way - if not for those tattoos. ~ Gena Showalter

Bravery isn't when you go looking for trouble; bravery is when trouble comes looking for you. ~ P.I. Barrington

Before sequels became the most reliable way to make a buck, Bond set the standard for lavish serial adventures. Before Hollywood found gold in multimillion-dollar adaptations of comic-book characters - in the Superman, Batman and Spider-Man blockbusters - Bond was the movies' first big-budget franchise superhero. ~ Richard Corliss

I got to read some writings by serial killers, and they got inside my head. They were quite disturbing. I read disturbing stuff about that very detached way of manipulating people to do things. ~ Ralph Fiennes

It wasn't Dean's fault," Allie insists. "Seriously, it's all on me. I freaked out for no reason." She finally looks over at me. "See? This is why I don't like horror movies! You watch one scary movie when you're a kid and suddenly everyone who comes to your door is a serial killer."

"Are you kidding me right now? You'll watch a horror movie with my sister but not me? We have to watch the cancer movie?"

"Dicky," Summer chides. "You're being grumpy."

I glare at my sister with enough force to make her wince. "Not one word out of you," I snap. "And don't think I didn't feel you kick me right before I passed out. Who does that, Summer? Who kicks a man when he's down?"

From the corner of my eye, I see Tucker sink to the floor. He buries his face in his hands, shaking with laughter.

The EMT blocks my line of sight by squatting in front of me. "I need to examine you for a concussion."

Oh for fuck's sake. ~ Elle Kennedy

If you're passionate, be passionate enough to fail. Fail small, accept responsibility, repeat. The people who make change are the survivors of serial failure. ~ Seth Godin

I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, without question, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography. ~ Ted Bundy

When I first met you," Stellan said again, sleepily, "I thought you were an idiot. Who gets on a plane with a stranger who just pulled a knife on her?" he said. "What is wrong with you? I could have been a serial killer. ~ Maggie Hall

Serial killing
definition: must hit three,
just like a gangbang. ~ Asa Akira

Love changes everything. I proposed to my wife after we limped away from a physical altercation with another serial killer. Good times." "Feels ~ J.D. Robb

He was supposed to be the first man to tell her that she was beautiful and help her determine who she was before anyone had the opportunity to label her. She was supposed to be his "little girl". ~ Anais Torres

The inside of his skull, it tasted like roses and barbed wire and butterflies. Switchblades and heroin and grassy green gardens. ~ Mercedes M. Yardley

That high pitch scream emitted by Rose made me wince! Her ear bursting howls would stun me into silence as much as it silenced the eldest child in their home, eight-year-old Anna-Marie. ~ Stephen Richards

I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers and burglars. She told her mother, who then told mine. ~ Nina Bawden

More recently, my father has been impressed with how Billy basically started at the bottom of Payton Mills and has worked himself up to South East Region Vice President."

Cletus frowned. "Is that his title?"

"My father thinks so. And he's certain Billy wants to run for state senate. Both my parents like the idea of having a son-in-law in politics. I think that's why they like Jackson so much. I know he has plans to run for office."

"Jackson would make a great politician."

"I thought you didn't like Jackson?"

"I don't. Saying someone would make a great politician is like saying someone would make a great serial killer. It's not a compliment. ~ Penny Reid

The first good-looking girl I see tonight is going to die. ~ Edmund Kemper

He should have recognized that what really fascinated him was the hunt, the adventure of searching out his victims. And, to a degree, possessing them physically, as one would possess a potted plant, a painting or a Porsche. Owning, as it were, this individual. ~ Ted Bundy

It's much harder to play myself. If I ever do a movie again, it'll be a singing serial killer. ~ Neil Diamond

Millions of years ago, the first lizard crawled out of the water and hit the second lizard over the head with a rock. Thus, the first serial killer was born. ~ Dexter

I spend most of my days up to my elbows in someone's chest cavity. Really, I know zip about music."
He didn't bother hiding his surprise. "Wow. That must be ... messy."
"That didn't sound too great, did it? Let me reassure you - I'm a doctor, not a serial killer. ~ Sarah Mayberry

Too young to party, just odd enough to participate in federal investigations of serial murder. Story of my life. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I want to play a character I've never been before-a crazy serial killer like Charlize Theron in Monster. I'd love to have to shave my head. ~ Jennifer Lawrence

Serial killers are everywhere! Well, perhaps not in our neighborhood, but on our television screens, at the movie theatres, and in rows and rows of books at our local Borders or Barnes and Noble Booksellers. ~ Pat Brown

Her body was spattered with tiny bits of the reverend's flesh and blood, like someone had combined shrimp and tomato soup and then forgot to put the lid on the blender. ~ Chelsea Cain

Since 1966, hundreds of books have been published that follow murderers along their paths of destruction. Every serial killer, it seems, now has a biographer or two. ~ Eric Schlosser

Big deal, death comes with the territory. See you in Disneyland. ~ Richard Ramirez

There is sometimes a fine line between a cop and a criminal. What drives their personality may be the same, and they have simply chosen different roles and professions to call their own."

Dr. ML Rapier PhD, Clinical Psychologist. ~ M.L Rapier

They say it's the number of people I killed, I say it's the principle. ~ Aileen Wuornos

There are questions that run through your head when you find out that you're a serial killer. ~ Charlie Human

Essentially all serial offenders experience trauma in childhood that leaves them unable to form normal emotional and psychological connections with other humans. ~ Joanna Schaffhausen

Jenks kept me alive for two years through two death threats, a crazy banshee, and at least two serial killers. Its about time I return the favor! And if I can't, then I can sit by his bed and hold his hand as he dies, 'cause I've had plenty of practice doing that, too! ~ Kim Harrison

I read extensively about serial killers and all sorts of things people get up to. ~ Karin Slaughter

I'd love to adapt more contemporary novels. But there isn't really enough story and character to make a really satisfying serial, so they tend to be single dramas. ~ Andrew Davies

I think of myself more as a designer than a serial entrepreneur. As a designer, the easiest way to see that something happens is to start a company and then be the boss, and then people have to do what you say. ~ Stewart Butterfield

Do you know anyone who would be willing to die to save those five-thousand serial killers?"
"No. Everyone I know is too smart for that!"
"Yet Someone did die to save all of the serial killers, and all of the old women, and all of the soldiers, and all of the babies that the world has ever known. That one is Jesus Christ. He died for you and for me. He died for everyone, because in this world our sin has condemned us to death, and the only way that we can be saved was for someone who was Himself without sin to be willing to die in our place."
Molly was silent. Her bright smile had faded, and she felt tears well up in her eyes. ~ Joyce Swann

Nowadays, with much more racial and ethnic mixing, we are seeing serial killers murdering a variety of victims; whoever comes along will most likely do. ~ Pat Brown

Writers seldom just stop writing. We're like serial killers in that way. You have to stop us, because we cannot stop ourselves. ~ Marilyn Johnson

Mother Nature is a serial killer.No ones better. More creative. Like all serial killers, she can't help but the urge to get caught. What good are all those brilliant crimes if nobody takes the credit? So she leaves crumbs. Now, the hard part is, and why you spend decades in school, is seeing the crumbs for the clues they are. Sometimes the thing you thought to be the most brutal aspect of the virus, actually turns out to be the chink in its armor. She loves disguising her weaknesses as strengths. She's a b*tch. ~ Character From World War Z Andrew Fassbauch

Basically people who love horror movies are people with boring lives. They want to be stimulated, and they need to reassure themselves, because when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether it would mean losing one of the few ways we have to ease the anxiety of the imagination. And I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers and mass murderers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news, right? ~ Ryu Murakami

Animals don't do this. ~ Kenneth Eade

No, we love war.
War. Starvation. Plague. They fast-track us to enlightenment.
"It's the mark of a very, very young soul," Mr. Whittier used to say, "to try and fix the world. To try and save anyone from their ration of misery."
We have always loved war. We are born knowing that war is why we're here. And we love disease. Cancer. We love earthquakes. In this amusement-park fun house we call the planet earth, Mr. Whittier says we adore forest fires. Oil spills. Serial killers. ~ Chuck Palahniuk