Quotes from Ann Rule

Lazy people tend not to take chances, but express themselves by tearing down other's work.

three percent of all males are deemed to be antisocial and without conscience, while only one percent of females seem to lack compassion for others. But the icy manipulations of that one percent are utterly fascinating. No one can be crueler than a woman without a conscience.

As I write these recollections of women who survived, I hope my readers are taking careful note of why they did. They screamed. They fought. They slammed doors in a stranger's face. They ran. They doubted glib stories. They spotted flaws in those stories. They were lucky enough to have someone step up and protect them.

Yet, in reality, Ted loved things more than he loved people. He could find life in an abandoned bicycle or an old car, and feel a kind of compassion for these inanimate objects, more compassion than he could ever feel for another human being.

Any of us who have raised children know, as John F. Kennedy once said, that "to have children is to give hostages to fate.

Dr. Benjamin Spock, who worked in a veterans' hospital dealing with emotional illnesses during World War II, commented at the time that there was a pronounced cross-sex problem in dealing with psychopathic personalities. The male psychopaths had no difficulty in bewitching female staff members, while the male staff picked up on them rapidly. The female psychopaths could fool the male staff but not the women.

And, like all the others, I have been manipulated to suit Ted's needs. I don't feel particularly embarrassed or resentful about that. I was one of many, all of us intelligent, compassionate people who had no real comprehension of what possessed him, what drove him obsessively.

Just be careful," a Seattle homicide detective warned. "Maybe we'd better know where to find your dental records in case we need to identify you." I laughed, but the words were jarring; the black humor that would surround Ted Bundy evermore begun.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all," but conscience is what gives us our humanity, the factor that separates us from animals. It allows us to love, to feel another's pain, and to grow. Whatever the drawbacks are to being blessed with a conscience, the rewards are essential to living in a world with other human beings.

I watched from somewhere up above and saw the troopers lift the car off someone. Then I saw that it was me lying there. I wasn't afraid, and I didn't feel any pain—not until I woke up in the hospital three days later. Since then, I've known that the soul doesn't die, only the body, and I've never been afraid.

Some people hate the smell of hospitals. I hate the smell of jails and prisons, all the same: stale cigarette smoke, Pine-Sol, urine, sweat, and dust.

I ended that letter, 'There is nothing in this life that is a complete tragedy - nothing - try to remember that.' Looking back, I wonder at my naiveté. Some things in life ARE complete tragedies. Ted Bundy's story may well be one of them.

Choices are like dominoes, one tumbling against the next and then the next until events go out of human control.

The stalking, predatory animal cuts the weakest from the pack, and then kills at his leisure.

He was a shadow man, fighting to survive in a world that was never made for him.

The only clue I had was that my dog (who liked everyone) didn't like Ted at all. Whenever he bent over my desk at the Crisis Clinic, she growled and the hackles on her neck stood up. The lesson is clear: Pay attention to your dog!

You cannot step over a mountain," she told me, "but if you step over pebble by pebble, you'll look back and the mountain will be behind you.

The lesson is clear: Pay attention to your dog!

The most basic bit of advice given to women who have to walk alone at night is, 'Look alert. Be aware of your surroundings and walk briskly. You will be safer if you know where you are going, and if anyone who observes you senses that.' The stalking, predatory animal cuts the weakest from the pack, and then kills at his leisure.

Don't confuse me with the facts—I've already made up my mind.

I asked him if there was any effective treatment for people like Bundy. "He paused for a moment and said, 'Only a sledgehammer between the eyes.

Looking back, we see it is often casual choices which chart a path to tragedy.

Anfering sex for money is not a profession that glorifies women; it is a profession born of desperation, poverty, alieatioin, and loneliness.

On the surface, at least, it seemed that I had more problems than Ted did. He was one of those rare people who listen with full attention, who evince a genuine caring by their very stance. You could tell things to Ted that you might never tell anyone else.