“In 2001, I moved from Philly to Atlanta, where I lived for six years. ...” — Karen Abbott Quote

“In 2001, I moved from Philly to Atlanta, where I lived for six years. I had never lived anywhere but Philly, and you can imagine the culture shock; the Civil War seeps into daily life and conversation down South in a way it never does up North.”

“I wasn't really a dark kid, but I was in my head a lot. I got good grades all through my 16 years of Catholic school, but I was always writing these weird - and, I have to say, really bad - stories, filled with murder.”

“The ideas and practices of Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th-century Australian healer, had spread to the United States and, by the 1840s, held the country in thrall. Mesmer proposed that everything in the universe, including the human body, was governed by a 'magnetic fluid' that could become imbalanced, causing illness.”

“When you're vulnerable and lost and then suddenly somebody is kind to you and gives you love and gives you tenderness and takes care of you in some way, that creates a huge indebtedness. From there, the likelihood that you're going to follow them anywhere is much higher.”

“Obviously I've grown up around YouTubers, people getting millions of hits, but I was never anywhere near that.”

“Everybody plays basketball in D.C. Not on a team. Just around the way. Anywhere. I actually loved basketball.”