Karin Slaughter

Though he was not a reader himself, my father understood that reading is not just an escape. It is access to a better way of life.

The most important lesson I have learned from spending years talking to law enforcement officers is that the vast majority of them really want to do a good job. They have a physical need to do a good job. And yet, we don't give them the resources that would help them.

Prosecutors and public defenders deserve to make a living wage.

My sister is dyslexic, and she's so smart, so intelligent in all of the ways that matter.

I think chalking up human behavior to evil lets us all off the hook too easily.

I write fifteen hours a day, stopping at Oprah-o'clock.

I'm going to name a name: Janet Evanovich. She writes the same book over and over, and I read every single one of them and eagerly anticipate them.

Men are more particular, and they're not going to grab something with a bodice-ripper cover on it.

Growing up in Georgia in the southeastern United States, I was always reading and always kept to myself. I never felt isolated, though; I just liked being alone.

I've always been drawn to dark stories. I enjoy reading Flannery O'Connor, Patricia Highsmith, and Margaret Mitchell.

I love reading almost as much as I love writing.

Most of my books begin with a nap on my couch here, when I dream up characters and story lines, and then I write on my laptop in the recliner and handle the business side of email at my desk, which is sagging in the middle - maybe from so many words?

Oh, I'm completely OCD about neatness.

It was always my dream to write for a living.

I always wanted to be a writer. In the beginning, I thought I had to rewrite 'Gone with the Wind,' but eventually, I found my way and realized that wasn't me.

I grew up reading thrillers. Honestly, I was always drawn to the very detailed ones like Patricia Cornwell. I love details.

Women know how to scare other women.

Anyone who's been to high school with teenage girls knows how horrible girls can be.

We make assumptions: nurses should be nice, teachers should be good. But everyone has a dark side, some darker than others.

It seems like women are always told, 'It is not your time.'

I thought I had to write literature and add my name to the list of great Southern storytellers. Fortunately for me, no one wanted to read any of those stories. They got rejected by everyone. Sometimes, I would get a note saying they liked the writing, but the story simply didn't work.

I grew up in a small town in Georgia where nothing bad happened - it was like Mayberry.

Graphic novels let you take risks that just wouldn't fly in the conventional book form.

Visual storytelling is at once immediate and subversive.

Librarians have always stood up for writers and readers in every kind of community across this country.

There's a tendency among some male writers to make the women in their stories weak and needing of rescue so that their hero looks like a manly man.

Denise Mina is probably one of the most gifted writers out there, whether it's mystery or literary or whatever label you want to give it.

Jack Reacher is one of the sexiest characters in fiction.

For many children, the library represents their only access to books, reading, and the Internet outside of their home. If you think about how far behind a child would be without access to these fundamental tools - tools that are vital to successful employment later in life - it's a travesty.

Equal access to reading is fundamental to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I grew up having the library as the best place ever. I spent a lot of weekends there as a kid - my parents would drop me off and leave me there all day. I would just sit in the back and read whatever I could find.

When I became a published writer, I said, 'Whatever I can do to help the libraries I want to do,' so all of my book tours since then have involved me coming to a library and talking about how important libraries are for a community.

I started Save the Libraries in 2010 by hosting a big fundraiser in my city library of DeKalb County in Atlanta. Through that, I learned that even with fundraisers, libraries often don't make money - they just barely break even.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, libraries make sense. It's such a small investment. Every dollar supporting a library system returns five dollars to the community.

When you grow up starving, you cannot point with pride to a book you've just spent six hours reading. Picking cotton, sewing flour bags into clothes - those were the skills my father grew up appreciating.

'Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case,' 'The Secret of the Old Clock,' 'Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret,' 'Flowers in the Attic,' 'Gone With the Wind' - these are the books that defined my childhood. They thrilled me. They made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world.

I always want to make sure the book I'm writing is the best book I can deliver.

I'm just not a crazy, stay-out-all-night sort of person. I love writing.

I don't get hung up a lot on angst.

I never really fitted in, because I've always been interested in really dark things.

My sister lived in England for a while when I was 12, and I came to visit her, and I spent most of the time in her flat reading.

In the South, we drink the Bible with our mother's milk.

When you write as a woman, there's this feeling there's going to be a softness.

You can take risks with the characters and their development in a standalone novel.

That's why I love crime novels so much: When I write a crime novel, the conflict is built in.

As a writer, I've always felt it's my job to be extremely careful when writing about victims, especially women.

A book I would take with me to a desert island is 'Paradise Lost,' which I studied in college and hated so much by the end of the class that I never wanted to see it again.

I hate to badmouth any book or writer, because I know how it feels to be on the other end of that.

Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.

The familiar trope of the woman in peril doesn't really interest me.