Samantha

“You do that a lot. Bring up serial killer stuff when the topic turns more serious."
"What could be more serious than mass murder?"
He gave me that look that immediately made me feel all prickly inside, all you don't know me, but then also a little fuck, you really know me.”
― Alicia Thompson, Love in the Time of Serial Killers

“I feel like I grew up afraid of so many things," I said. "There's just so much uncertainty in life, especially when you're a kid . . . you don't know why your dad is upset, or why your mom puts up with it, or whether you'll ever have a true friend you could talk to. It sounds twisted, but by the time I was a teenager, there was something almost comforting about reading about serial killers. It was like, here, be afraid of this. Focus on this. There's uncertainty, and open questions, but it'll all get wrapped up at the end. Justice will be served, the victims will be remembered, whatever. It was only when I started reading and rereading some of those books more closely that I started questioning what justice meant, or truth, or even fear.”
― Alicia Thompson, Love in the Time of Serial Killers

“That is a very relatable example," I said. "Fuck treadmills. If I'm running it better be because the Sunrise Slayer is after me.”
― Alicia Thompson, Love in the Time of Serial Killers

“I know studying literature or rhetoric in general can get a bad rap," I said. "There are a lot of people who ask what's the point, poring over words that were written twenty, fifty, two hundred years ago. And doing it again and again, after there's already been so much written on the subject. But ultimately I think it's about learning to pay attention. Learning to examine something closely, and ask questions, and place it in different frameworks to see how it might change. As a culture we are what we write about, and examining those texts can teach us a lot about how we see the world.”
― Alicia Thompson, Love in the Time of Serial Killers