Ripper QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " The issue which faced the jury was this: was Sutcliffe a clever criminal, aware of what he was doing and determined to avoid capture?
... In a sense, it was the wrong question. The battle that was fought out in court - the mad/bad dichotomy - both substitutes for and obscures the real dilemma raised by the Yorkshire Ripper case: is Sutcliffe a one-off, su generis as I have heard one psychiatrist describe him, someone who stands outside our culture and has no relation to it? Those who assert that Sutcliffe is mad are in essence saying yes to this question; madness is a closed category, one over which we have no control and for which we bear no responsibility. The deranged stand apart from us; we cannot be blamed for their insanity. Thus the urge to characterize Sutcliffe as mad has powerful emotional origins; it has as much to do with how we see ourselves and the society in which we live... It is a distancing mechanism, a way of establishing a comforting gulf between ourselves and a particularly unacceptable criminal. "

― Joan Smith

3 " How miserably hypocritical, you might say, but no sooner am I offered a chance to flee Hell than I yearn to stay. Few families hold their relations as closely as do prisons. Few marriages sustain the high level of passion that exists between criminals and those who seek to bring them to justice. It’s no wonder the Zodiac Killer flirted so relentlessly with the police. Or that Jack the Ripper courted and baited detectives with his - or her - coy letters. We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. "

― Chuck Palahniuk , Damned (Damned, #1)

4 " 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 (Shades of London, #1)

5 " Jack the Ripper – media myth arising when clever individual murderers concocted a monster so as to avoid suspicion. "