Jack The Ripper Quotes

“The victims of Jack the Ripper were never 'just prostitutes'; they were daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, and lovers. They were women. They were human beings, and surely that in itself is enough.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction:

Simply to participate.”
― Alan Moore, From Hell

“It was as if the news itself wanted to reassure me. Even Jack the Ripper himself had reappeared as part of the greeting committee.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Name of the Star

“It was mild monsters like these that made Jack the Ripper go after young women, she decided: who could tolerate yielding the world to someone who behaved as if she had given birth to the very world herself?”
― Gregory Maguire, Lost

“Everyone is a whore, Fiona." I felt rather than heard when he unfolded himself from the settee. He wasn't so much a warmth or an essence behind me. But the absence of either.

"We each merely offer different parts of ourselves for use, do we not? Our sex. Our blades. Our muscles. Our mind. Our time. Our souls.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Business of Blood

“The air you're breathing right now is also the same air that once circulated through the respiratory system of Jesus over 2000 years ago, which probably makes you feel a bit spiritual, doesn’t it? But unfortunately you’re also breathing the same air that once circulated through the body of Jack the Ripper, which probably makes you feel a bit shit”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“At its very core, the story of Jack the Ripper is a narrative of a killer's deep, abiding hatred of women, and our culture's obsession with the mythology serves only to normalize its particular brand of misogyny... In order to keep him alive, we have had to forget his victims. We have become complicit in their diminishment.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“How come they get to be gray-haired and still in love with each other, while Lilly tears out what's left of my heart and dumps it into her Jill-The-Ripper shredder?”
― Daven Anderson, Vampire Syndrome

“Intuition was just the brain processing information more quickly than one's consciousness could comprehend.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Business of Blood

“Dig two graves, Fiona. One for your enemy... And one for yourself.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Business of Blood

“Death's business is a messy one.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Business of Blood

“Memories make for powerful ghosts..." I whispered.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Business of Blood

“Did you love me?" It was a pathetic question asked in a pathetic whisper.

"Oh, Fiona," The lips he pressed against my temple were anything but ecumenical. His hand on my back drifted to my waist. "My feelings for you cannot be reduced to a single word. You are my only temptation.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Business of Blood

“The courses their lives took mirrored that of so many other women of the Victorian age, and yet were so singular in the way they ended. It is for them that I write this book. I do so in the hope that we may now hear their stories clearly and give back to them that which was so brutally taken away with their lives: their dignity.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women

“The coppers, thinking I must be hacked to bits at the bottom of the Thames, now blame both murders on the Ripper. The theory is so ironic I cannot help but snort out a tirade of titters.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“It was a myth, a fantastical portrayal of my mentor himself, his legend forever anchoring itself to history in a way mine will never be. Spring Heeled Jack, the boogeyman with eyes like fireballs who could jump unnaturally high. Breathing blue flames he'd ravage women with his claws.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“My mind… It is a delicate veil, torn by genetics, made worse by my maker thinking his curse could mend me.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“The smallest lapse in emotion leaves me spinning, overcome with bloodlust.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“Creatures, like myself, have voices that are laced with impending peril, and yet, each and every time they succeed in hypnotising another victim.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“I swivel my back to her, my eyes gluttonous and eager to get their fill of this intimate piece of what has come to be her puzzle.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“Her blood. Gushing out, it darkens her lovely hair until each strand is as heavy as the shadows of my mind.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“My mind is blank. Yet, one word rides the Ferris wheel of my psyche, whirling around and leaving me dizzy - monster. It is unavoidable. I am a monster.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“For anyone, man or woman to desire me, it is absurd! I am nothing but a gargoyle filled with the blood of others.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“Like a kelpie the sunlight feigns innocence until it meets my skin, transforming into a sharp-toothed monster that tears away at my cold dead flesh.”
― Ilse V. Rensburg, Blood Sipper

“Mr. Jones entered wearing his spotless black trench coat, the shiny black shoes, and the ridiculous hat that made him look like a figure from an 1880s London police sketch.”
― Alistair Cross, Dream Reaper: Angels & Demons

“Ghost Wail Square by Stewart Stafford

There's a place that canines shun,
In The Witching Hour stark,
Dogs wandering misty avenues,
Flee from Pandora's Park.

Nicknamed Ghost Wail Square,
Once whispered as Harlot's Row,
Twilight cobblestones flooded with blood,
Extinguished collusion's glow.

Blue bloodlust inflamed there,
In scented carriages and filthy lanes,
Carnivores at the butcher's block,
As they scattered ill-gotten gains.

At Devil's Hour, the horror peaks,
Death rattle knocks on doors,
As screams for mercy fill the air,
No rescue missions for whores.

A killer sheltered 'neath potent wings,
A skittish stranger to the noose,
Then sewn mouths shall speak,
As festering skeletons slip loose.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Despite the extraordinary efforts taken to bring the Ripper to justice, one of my great disappointments with the case was that we lacked the good fortune to give the people an ending, less so the sort it deserved. In turn, those vast and interconnected stories, provided and investigated go without an ending to this day.”
― Kevin Morris, The Ripper Lives

“Despite the extraordinary efforts taken to bring the Ripper to justice, one of my great disappointments with the case was that we lacked the good fortune to give the people an ending, less so the sort it deserved. In turn, those vast and interconnected stories, provided and investigated, go without an ending to this day.”
― Kevin Morris

“Contemplation filled the air as a chill rolled through the room. Silence descended as the four of us turned to study the board as one. It's overlapping pages, threadbare twine, and handwritten scrawl, overloaded with information, inundating with questions, each more pressing than the last. Were we looking for a lone killer? If so, had our eyewitnesses glimpsed him in the night? When and where would he strike next? And why? And, grimmest of all, after Kelly, what would it look like?" ~ Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, The Ripper Lives: To Catch a Killer”
― Kevin Morris, The Ripper Lives: Jack the Ripper Series I - The Living and the Dead

“Recently I had begun to think that soon this city would be forever stained in cold, dead blood.”
― Sarah Pinborough, Mayhem