The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

“Sometimes she craved a little danger. And that was why she had book club.”

“He thinks we’re what we look like on the outside: nice Southern ladies. Let me tell you something…there’s nothing nice about Southern ladies.”

“Why do you pretend what we do is nothing?” she asked. “Every day, all the chaos and messiness of life happens and every day we clean it all up. Without us, they would just wallow in filth and disorder and nothing of any consequence would ever get done. Who taught you to sneer at that? I’ll tell you who. Someone who took their mother for granted.”

“We’re a book club,” Maryellen said. “What are we supposed to do? Read him to death? Use strong language?”

“A reader lives many lives,” James Harris said. “The person who doesn’t read lives but one. But if you’re happy just doing what you’re told and reading what other people think you should read, then don’t let me stop you. I just find it sad.”

“With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom. As you'll see, it's not a fair fight.”

“one thing I learned from all these books: it pays to be paranoid.”

“You’d rather get stabbed forty-one times than ruin the curb appeal of your home?” Maryellen asked.“Yes,” Grace said.”

“I've had three children . . . And some man who's never felt . . . his baby crown is stronger than me? Is tougher than me?”

“Think of us what you will," she thought, "we made mistakes, and probably scarred our children for life, and we froze sandwiches, and forgot car pool, and got divorced. But when the time came, we went the distance.”

“I am not sure what the appropriate gesture is to make toward the family of the woman who bit off your ear, but if you felt absolutely compelled, I certainly wouldn’t take food.”

“Being a teenager isn't a number, " Maryellen said. "It's the age when you stop liking them.”

“What had been destroyed made what remained that much more precious. That much more solid. That much more important.”

“The problem with book club these days is too many men. They don’t know how to pick a book to save their lives and they love to listen to themselves talk. It’s nothing but opinions, all day long.”

“You ladies read a strange assortment of books," James Harris said. "We're a strange assortment of broads," Kitty replied.”

“Books can inspire you to love yourself more, it said. By listening to, writing out, or verbally expressing your feelings.”

“A no-good man will tell you he's going to change," she said. "He'll tell you whatever you want to hear, but you're the fool if you don't believe what you see.”

“Everyone's hungry for our children," she said, and her voice cracked. "The whole world wants to gobble up colored children and no matter how many it takes it just licks its lips and wants more.”

“Why is it always bitches, Kitty thought. As if men believed that word had some kind of magic power.”

“The silence continued and Patricia felt something bigger than her fear: solidarity.”

“I think,” Grace said, and they sat up straighter, “that it shows a remarkable lack of planning on Betty’s part. If you’re going to murder your best friend with an axe, you should make sure you know what you’re doing.”

“I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom. As you'll see, it's not a fair fight.”

“The police think all kind of things,” Mrs. Greene said. “Doesn’t necessarily make them true.”

“If ifs and buts were candy and nuts it would be Christmas every day,”

“In every book we read, no one ever thought anything bad was happening until it was too late. This is where we live, it's where our children live, it's our home. Don't you want to do absolutely everything you can to keep it safe?”

“My husband has no more consideration for me than a dog, she said. He goes off and screws little girls with the other men and we sit home like good little women and wash their shirts and pack their bags for their sex trips. We keep their houses warm and clean for when they’re ready to come home and shower off some other woman’s perfume before tucking their children into bed. For years I’ve pretended I don’t know where he goes, or who those girls are on the phone, but every time he comes home, I lie there in bed beside my husband, who doesn’t touch me, who doesn’t talk to me, who doesn’t love me, and I pretend I can’t smell some twenty-year-old’s body on him”

“Nightwalking men always have a hunger on them [...] They never stop taking and they don't know about enough. They mortgaged their souls away and now they eat and eat and never know how to stop.”

“Isn't that how every serial killer gets away with it for so long?" Patricia asked. "Everyone ignores the little things and Ted Bundy keeps killing women until finally someone does what they should have done in the first place and connects the little things that didn't add up, but by then it's too late.”

“You said you wanted to live where people watched out for each other,” Patricia told her. “But what’s the good of watching if we’re not going to act?”

“it made no sense, but sometimes you did a thing because that was just what you did, not because it was sensible.”