Patricia Cornwell Quotes

Do no harm and leave the world a better place than you found it.

rain slowly slides down the glass as if the night is crying.

I wouldn't want to assume that all men are like you. If I did, I know I would give them up entirely

The dead have never bothered me. It's the living that I fear.

Survival my only hope. Success my only revenge

Grief was like a seizure that shook me like a storm.

We create our own worlds. We destroy our own worlds. It is that simple..

You have to live where you wake up, even if someone else dreamed you there.

Leaves covered pavement like soggy cereal.

What the hell. You die. Everybody dies. So you die healthy. So what?

And so to read is, in truth, to be in the constant act of creation. The old lady on the bus with her Orwell, the businessman on the Tube with Patricia Cornwell, the teenager roaring through Capote -- they are not engaged in idle pleasure. Their heads are on fire. Their hearts are flooding. With a book, you are the landscape, the sets, the snow, the hero, the kiss -- you are the mathematical calculation that plots the trajectory of the blazing, crashing zeppelin. You -- pale, punchable reader -- are terraforming whole worlds in your head, which will remain with you until the day you die. These books are as much a part of you as your guts and your bone. And when your guts fail and your bones break, Narnia, or Jamaica Inn, or Gormenghast will still be there; as pin-sharp and bright as the day you first imagined them -- hiding under the bedclothes, sitting on the bus. Exhausted, on a rainy day, weeping over the death of someone you never met, and who was nothing more than words until you transfused them with your time, and your love, and the imagination you constantly dismiss as "just being a bit of a bookworm.

But caffeine, cigarettes and cholesterol, the grim reapers of the common man - God forbid I should give them up.

Has all the trappings of a mystery novel, doesn't it?

The world is full of people who mean no harm and cause a great deal of it.

Isolation is the cruelest of punishments, and it had never occurred to me that I was something less than human because I wasn’t a man.

And suddenly the world was filled with wooden faces and flat voices - and, you were alone.

I feel something change in me... I feel a flat calm, a detachment, the way I get when something is too much and yet l must function and in fact function at the highest level. I know what I'm in for, only a fool wouldn't know that...

Life brings with it strangeness and surprises and upsets

I was consumed, too, not by the dying but by the dead.

You artists think you’re the only ones who can relate to these things. Many of us have the same feelings, the same emptiness, the same loneliness. But we don’t have the tools to verbalize them. So we carry on, we struggle. Feelings are feelings. I think people’s feelings are pretty much the same all over the world.

No, Lucy. Your mother doesn’t really love men. They are a symptom of her obsessive quest of finding somebody who will make her whole. She doesn’t understand that she has to make herself whole.

You know what the best security system is? Window shades.

He was pushing fifty, with a face life had chewed on, and long wisps of graying hair parted low on one side and combed over his balding pate.

The truth is none of us always does what’s right or fair.

I disagreed. Some people feel things more deeply than others, and some people feel things the rest of us don’t. This is what causes isolation, the sense of being apart, different

Be careful who you choose for an enemy because that is who you become most like, Anna tosses Nietzsche's quote up into the air. She serves up words she has heard me say in the past.

Blood squirted as his transected femoral artery haemorrhaged to the rhythm of his horrible heart. - From Potter's Field

being in love brings out both the best and the worst in us. One day we’re generous and sensitive to a fault, and the next we’re not fit to shoot. Our lives become lessons in extremes.

I reel in an uncanny intoxication of emotions, on minute bewildered and then frightened then the next, I swing from exhaustion to mania, from depression to tranquility and beneath it all, excitement fizzes as if my blood is filled with gas.

You don’t get over it, I think. Some things you won’t get over, not ever, you can’t . . .

Thoughts are odd misfires

Não imaginava o que seria preciso para me levar à loucura. Se calhar era como morrer. Depois de uma pessoas se passar para o outro lado não se sente a diferença. (Kay Scarpetta)

She can love one minute and feel nothing the next, not even anger or pain, because after a while those, too, will pass.

When violence occurs anywhere, it is everybody’s problem,

I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea.

It is disheartening when a thinking person is forced to admit that many clichés are true. There is no justice on this earth.

Some people should never be gone, and those that should hang around forever.

When all else fails, I cook. Some

...nothing succeeds like success.

No one, good or evil, ceases to exist; life is energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed; it is recycled.

People can burn and beat love out of you. They really can kill it, and it’s not your fault you don’t feel it anymore, and how liberating it is to finally realize that. Love isn’t for better or for worse, through thick or thin. It damn well shouldn’t be.

The public is blaming the city officials, who in turn have to find someone else to blame. It's the nature of the beast. If the police, the politicians, can pass the buck on down the line, they will.

(Lucy:) Why do you think I was such a little fatso? From eating the junk she bought. Snacks, sodas, and pizza that tastes like cardboard. I have fat cells that will scream for the rest of my life because of Mother. I'll never forgive her.

And so to read is, in truth, to be in the constant act of creation. The old lady on the bus with her Orwell, the businessman on the Tube with Patricia Cornwell, the teenager roaring through Capote -- they are not engaged in idle pleasure. Their heads are on fire. Their hearts are flooding. With a book, you are the landscape, the sets, the snow, the hero, the kiss -- you are the mathematical calculation the plots the trajectory of the blazing, crashing zeppelin. You -- pale, punchable reader -- are terraforming whole worlds in your head, which will remain with you until the day you die. These books are as much a part of you as your guts and your bone. And when your guts fail and your bones break, Narnia, or Jamaica Inn, or Gormenghast will still be there; as pin-sharp and bright as the day you first imagined them -- hiding under the bedclothes, sitting on the bus. Exhausted, on a rainy day, weeping over the death of someone you never met, and who was nothing more than words until you transformed them with your time, and your love, and the imagination you constantly dismiss as "just being a bit of a bookworm.

I tended to hold love hostage in my heart because, if expressed, I feared it might abandon me as many people in my life had.

When you dine with the devil use a long spoon, and I’ve repeatedly preached that to him, too.

Perhaps my greatest shame was that I could not show what I should, and I worried no one would ever know how much I cared. Crows

That’s one of the perks if you’re sick. You already feel bad enough and then people make you feel worse because they don’t want to bother you.

The older I got, the more I was of the opinion that love can be experienced in many different ways. There is no right or wrong way to love, only in how it is expressed.

a force to reckon with. I’m sure of that. “The rear

Charity is giving to someone what he needs versus what you want to give him.

Charisma is something you have or you don't have. You can't manufacture it. You can't. She didn't try. It just was. - Matt Pettersen

You’re only as good as the people around you.

Hate makes you stupid.

Don’t announce what you fear could happen or someone evil might make it come true.

It’s not true that we are never given more than we can bear. Only it isn’t given. It simply happens.

At some level we intend everything we do. That’s why it’s extremely important to root out our intentions before they uproot us.

Fundamental problems are the same for everyone,” I reply as we move ahead again, then stop again. “Life, death, sickness, diets, relationships, bills that need to be paid.

Gordian knot, a knot impossible to unravel, and Alexander the Great solved the problem by cutting through it with his sword, in other words by cheating.

death can be liberating.

It was raining in Richmond on Friday, June 6.

If you have enough bad things happen to you in life, others begin to privately question if you invite them, are a magnet that attracts misfortune or danger or dysfunction.

it's hard as hell to get politicians excited about what we do out here, or about what you do, kay." "the problem is, the dead don't vote," i said. "i've heard of cases where they did.

but those days of being too terrified to move or breathe were left behind in my childhood. I’ve been through too much and it has hardened some primal part of me that no longer panics.

I behave myself, but it doesn’t mean I’m not interested. Being faithful to my commitments doesn’t mean thoughts don’t cross my mind or that I’m foolish enough to believe I’m not capable.

I didn't know what I wanted. Maybe I never had. The emotional distance was never worth the togetherness, and yet I didn't learn. Nothing had changed. Had he reached for me, I would have forgotten to behave sensibly. Desire has no reason, and the need for intimacy had never stopped. I had not conjured up the images in years, his lips on mine, his hands, the urgency of our hunger. Now I was tormented by the memories.

People often say they don't dream, when it's more accurate to say that they don't remember their dreams. It gets under our skin, Kay. All of it does. We just manage to cage in most of the emotions so they don't devour us.

And in an odd way, realizing all this has given me an unexpected satisfaction and a little more self-respect. I have changed, and it’s for the better. You really can’t love unconditionally. People can burn and beat love out of you. They really can kill it, and it’s not your fault you don’t feel it anymore, and how liberating it is to finally realize that. Love isn’t for better or for worse, through thick or thin. It damn well shouldn’t be.

Let's be honest, the world's always been a scary place with very little charm." I try to brush it off as I've brushed off the flu, as I brushed off the death of my father when I was young, as I've brushed off so much since Benton has known me.

People fail, everything fails, the magic we’re born believing in and working for and then doubting and finally fearing eventually rusts, rots, fades, breaks down, withers, dies, and turns to dust, and for me the response is always the same. I clean up. It’s what I do and

Truth is relative, then. It is about timing. It is about what is safe. Truth is the luxury of the privileged, of people who have plenty of food and are not forced to hide because they are Jews. Truth can destroy, and therefore it is not always wise or even healthy to be truthful.

Forensic pathology takes you places you think you’re fine to go but can’t come back from.

Then he’s aware.

To almost die is to know that one day you will, and to never again feel the same about anything.

Shutting down is denial. When you deny the past, you will repeat it.

Be careful who you choose for an enemy because that is who you become most like,

To hate another person is wrong. It is never right. Hate is a crime of the spirit that leads to crimes of the flesh.

We rarely are conscious of those primitive anxieties that creep out from under reason. And the only way to banish them is to turn on all the lights.

Some people simply want company.

You can never be real sure who's all right and who ain't... It's real hard to know these days, that's for damn sure.

Most of us feel isolated and paranoid during stressful times. We feel alone in the wilderness.

I was a small insect faced with a formidable male network web in which I might be ensnared but never a part.

And let me tell you another thing,” Marino threw back at

When you dine with the devil use a long spoon,

A significant portion of the human race has no idea what it is like to be attached to short legs, and I am forever finding myself indignantly pumping along like a handcar in a world of express trains.

Her case in particular haunts me. Despite decades of autopsies and crime scenes, I can honestly say I’ve never encountered the extreme brutality shown in the only existing scene photographs from the Ripper case.

franklin," she said sternly, "you know your daddy told you not to play with matches!" "no he didn’t," franklin countered. "he told me not to let him catch me playing with matches. and I’m not going to let him catch me.

We zijn ons maar zelden bewust van de primitieve angsten die zich onder onze rationele reacties verbergen.En de enige manier om ze uit te bannen is door al het licht aan te doen. Denk je dat je daar sterk genoeg voor bent?

I’m too old for change,” she explained. “I’m too old to pursue good health and new relationships. The past breathes for me. It is my life. You are young, Dr. Scarpetta. Someday you will see what it is like to look back. You will find it inescapable. You will find your personal history drawing you back into familiar rooms where, ironically, events occurred that set into motion your eventual estrangement from life. You will find the hard furniture of heartbreak more comfortable and the people who failed you friendlier with time. You will find yourself running back into the arms of the pain you once ran away from. It is easier. That’s all I can say. It is easier.” “Do

Crime reporting was aggressive in Richmond, an old Virginia city of 220,000, which last year was listed by the FBI as having the second-highest homicide rate per capita in the United States. It wasn’t uncommon for forensic pathologists from the British Commonwealth to spend a month at my office to learn more about gunshot wounds. It wasn’t uncommon for career cops like Pete Marino to leave the madness of New York or Chicago only to find Richmond was worse.

As for the crab, honey, listen up. One egg slightly beaten, one-half teaspoon dry mustard, a dash or two of Worcestershire sauce, four unsalted soda crackers, crushed. Chop up an onion, a Vidalia if you’re still hoarding any from summer. One green pepper, chop that. A teaspoon or two of parsley, salt and pepper to taste.” “Sounds fabulous,” I gratefully said. “Bev, what would I do without you?” “Now you gently mix all that together and shape it into patties.

If you can create a weapon that causes enough fear the fear itself can cause damage that's as paralyzing and destructive as any physical device like a bomb or a laser gun. Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently.

Apparently this was based on postings on the Internet, and I thought it all ridiculous, not quite sure who these Ripperologists were. I joked that their threat brought to mind Klingons in formation ready to fire upon the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Legend has it that Walter was taking a walk with his father one day and passed by a church where Oswald directed his young son’s attention to a memorial. “There’s a name you will never remember,” Oswald commented as he kept walking. Walter paused to read:

Then I will myself to feel nothing at all. It’s not helpful to react the way a normal person would. I banish what will interfere with my clinical discipline and reason, I run it off and far away from me. After all these years I’m good at emptying myself out.

If you ask me, the kryptonite for all humanity is bigotry, prejudice, us against them. Well-intended people blinded by rivalry and ambition or love and the bonds of blood. Overpowering and being the decider of who’s in and who’s out. Dividing people into groups. Making lists and assumptions. Deciding I’m okay and you’re not.

When you're going through something like this, you don't know what you're doing, even if you think you do. And no one can really understand what it's like unless they've suffered the same thing. You feel isolated. You go places and people avoid you, are afraid to meet your eyes and make conversation because they don't know what to say. So they whisper to each other ... You feel as if you're living inside a cave. You're afraid to be alone, afraid to be with others, afraid to be awake, and afraid to go to sleep because of how awful it feels when morning comes. You run like hell and wear yourself out. As I look back, I can see that everything I've done since Henna died was half crazy.

She’s what my mother used to call “plain,” by which she meant an unremarkable-looking girl who was worse off than “the ugly ones.” That’s how she would say it, and her explanation for such a vile statement couldn’t have been more logical. At least in her limited way of thinking, and also in Dorothy’s because she shares the same point of view. Pretty girls don’t try at all because they don’t have to. Ugly girls try harder for obvious reasons. That leaves plain girls, which usually is synonymous with smart girls, and they need to try but don’t know any better or can’t be bothered.

Fucking stupid to park there to begin with.” “Usually the bigger worry is regular people and the media thinking they can poke around. But no marked car? Okay. There goes your deterrent. Have it your way. You got any idea why the entrance lights weren’t on last night?” Marino said. “I only know that they weren’t. It’s in my report.” “They’re on now.” Gusts of wind hit them like invisible waves of a stormy surf, and Marino felt as if he was about to be washed off the roof. His hands were stiff, and he pulled his sleeves over them. “Then my guess would be the killer turned them off last night,” Morales said. “Kind of a strange thing to do once he’s already inside the building.” “Maybe he turned them off when he was leaving. So nobody would see him, in case someone was walking by, driving by.” “Then you’re probably not talking about Oscar doing it. Since he never left.

on without anesthesia. In a letter he describes: “I suffered agonies, as they related all to me, and did violence to myself in keeping to my seat. I could scarcely bear it.” Surgery on the penis, the rectum or the anus would have been a terrifying torture, especially if the patient was a five-year-old foreigner who couldn’t have possessed the coping skills, the insight or perhaps sufficient fluency in English to understand what was happening to him. It’s awful to consider what he might have imagined when a nurse changed his dressings, administered his medicines or appeared at his bedside with a supply of leeches if he had an inflammation believed to be due to an excess of blood. The nurse may have had a sweet bedside manner. She may have been strict and humorless. A typical requirement in those days was that she was single or widowed, ensuring that all her time could be devoted to the hospital. Nurses were underpaid. They worked long, grueling hours and were exposed to extraordinarily unpleasant conditions