Benjamin Stevenson > Quotes

“Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it's who you'd spill it for.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“But I promised to be reliable, not competent”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“If a killer is ever revealed and your ‘percentage read’ isn’t at least in the high eighties, they cannot be the real killer; there is simply too much of the book still to be read.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“Anger is as much an heirloom as any Rolex.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Owe, owe, owe. You use that word so much. A family is not a credit card.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“It’s not the writing that tells the story, it’s the reading.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Call me a reliable narrator. Everything I tell you will be the truth, or, at least, the truth as I knew it to be at the time that I thought I knew it.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“You can tell a lot about someone from whether they can handle an uncomfortable silence. If they ride it out or snap it off.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Every basic task starts to feel like a decision, and that becomes so draining that you end up unable to make any of them.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“This works to spoil films too: the highest-profile actor with the fewest lines is always the villain, and a sudden wide-shot of a character crossing a road means they are about to be hit by a car. A good author must not only wrong-foot the reader within the narrative, they must do it within the form of the novel itself. There are clues baked into the very object.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“But a bad person who thinks they’re a good one—now, that’s what got him into trouble.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“I’ll hold it here to mention that I know some authors are incapable of having a woman throw up without it being a clue to a pregnancy. These same authors seem to think nausea is the only indication of childbearing, not to mention their belief that vomit shoots out the woman’s mouth within hours of plot-convenient fertilisation. By some authors, I mean male ones.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“...my editor had crossed out my first go at this sentence and written Hypo=cold, Hyper=hot in the margin, in that helpful yet smug voice editors are born with, wishing to both correct you and impart their correctness upon you at the same time.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“One day you’ll realize family isn’t about whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“The wind was cruel; it found every crevasse in my clothes, invaded and patted me down like I owed it money.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“Silence is a tap left running: it fills and fills until it overflows and becomes insurmountable.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let’s get started.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“I'm sorry about before," I said. Seeing as we were shoulder to shoulder, I spoke outwards, lobbing my apology into the void of the mountain. It's the only way blokes know how to show humility, by pretending we're at a urinal.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“I am normally resolute in declining any invitation that comes with an Excel spreadsheet attached.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“You read people’s books, and you think you know them. They’re having a conversation with you for hundreds of pages, and there’s an intimacy there that you develop on your own.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“We used to send the insane to the mountains while we stayed in the cities. Now the cities drive us insane and we try to escape to the mountains.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret

“Family is gravity.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“We are seven chapters away from the next death.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“There is only one plot hole you could drive a truck through.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“Because now I know that in the months after something so devastating, everything feels like sleepwalking.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“Mystery writers these days always have to find a way to take away their crime-solvers’ phones because otherwise the reader sits there the whole time thinking, Google it!”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“one of the kindest things you can do to someone is to cut them off.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

“He was the type of person who picked up and carried a suitcase with wheels, just so he could complain about how heavy it was.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone

“Christopher stepped back as I cracked open the door. “You really think that device killed Rylan?” he asked. “It was just a piece of paper.” “So’s the Declaration of Independence. The Bible. Paper’s killed more people than any blade.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret