Sue Grafton Quotes

Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.

You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.

I love being single. It's almost like being rich.

Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.

It's disconcerting to realize how little you have to say to someone who once occupied such a prominent place in your bed.

I know there are people who believe you should forgive and forget. For the record, I'd like to say I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I'm given the opportunity to get even first.

There's a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain.

Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them." "I don't believe in ghosts," I said, faintly. "Some people can't see the color red. That doesn't mean it isn't there," she replied.

The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same.

Everything happens for a reason, but that doesn't mean there's a point.

Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right - a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates.

Pretending to be 'normal' is a lot harder than you think.

Personally, I'd rather grow old alone than in the company of anyone I've met so far. I don't experience myself as lonely, incomplete, or unfulfilled, but I don't talk about that much. It seems to piss people off--especially men. (Kinsey Millhone)

Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.

To many women mistake a man's hostility for wit and his silence for depth.

Lucky is the spouse who dies first, who never has to know what survivors endure.

Smile. It gives your face something to do.

You try to keep life simple but it never works, and in the end all you have left is yourself.

It's pitiful to have a life in which junk food is awarded the same high status as sex.

A woman should never, never, never be financially dependent to anyone, especially a man, because the minute you were dependent, you could be abused.

In my opinion, there's no condition in life that can't be ameliorated by a dose of junk food.

You never know which people will affect your life.

What could smell better than supper being cooked by someone else?

If you're unhappy, change something.

There are days when none of us can bear it, but the good comes around again. Happiness is seasonal, like anything else. Wait it out. There are people who love you. People who can help.

Sometimes being fooled by love is worth the price. At least you know you're alive and capable of feeling, even if all you end up with is chest pain.

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.

We all need to look into the dark side of our nature -- that’s where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we’re busy denying.

He might be a man without character, but she was a woman without courage. Of the two, which was worse?

People get careless when they're feeling safe.

The truth isn't always nice. It isn't always small enough to absorb at once. Sometimes the truth washes over you and threatens to take you right down with it.

Missing someone is a vague, unpleasant sensation, like gnawing anxiety. It isn't as concrete as grief, but it's just as pervasive and there's no escaping it.

I hate nature. I really do. Nature is composed entirely of sticks, dirt, fall-down places, biting and stinging things, and savageries too numerous to list. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Man has been building cities since the year oughty-ought, just to get away from this stuff.

We all do things we regret. It's part of growing up.

Life is hard. Life hurts. So what? You tough it out. You get through and then you'll feel good again.

Grief is as contagious as a yawn.

There's always something else. That's what makes life so much fun.

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They're just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.

If I'd been listening closely, I'd have caught the sound of the gods having a great big old tee-hee at my expense.

For the record, I'd like to say that I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I have a chance to get even first" Kinsey Millhone, V is for Vengeance

The cold hard truth will fall on stony ground, whereas your all-around trashy rumor will flourish like a weed.

Life is simple. You're the one making things complex.

Perhaps when we're forced to forfeit what we own, we lose any sentimental associations. Perhaps pawning our valuables frees us in the same way a house fire destroys not only our worldly goods, but our attachment to what's gone.

The critical lessons in life hold sway whether you like it or not.

You can't believe everything you hear. Sometimes, you can't even believe your eyes.

People make mistakes. People do things they never meant to do.

Memory is subject to a filtering process that we don’t always recognize and can’t always control. We remember what we can bear and we block what we cannot.

I like difficulty. It's what makes my job fun.

If love is what injures us, how can we heal?

Too much virtue has a corrupting effect.

Pain was better than anxiety any day of the week and sweat was better than depression.

Life was reduced to its four basic elements: air, food, drink, and a good friend.

So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.

You can’t make someone else do anything, even if you know you’re right.

Built into bad news is that sense of profound disbelief. The mind struggles to absorb the bare facts, defending itself against the larger implications.

You kill people you hate or you kill in rage or you kill to get even, but you don't kill someone you're indifferent to.

I don't know what is love about and I'm not sure I believe in it anyway.

People can hold out just so long and then they fold.

You don't have to justify yourself to me. You did what you did.

I think you'd best make your peace with the past since you've come this far. I think you know by now that you won't go back again.

These are the days that require discipline, when exercise is pure duty and the good feeling only comes later, consisting solely of self-congratulations for having done the job at all.

Verbal clashes seldom come to a satisfying end. They peter out in weak retorts that leave you wishing you’d been as clever in the moment as you are in reviewing the conversation later.

Whatever the surface appearances, most human beings come equipped with convoluted emotional machinery. With intimacy, the wreckage starts to show, damage rendered in the course of passions colliding like freight trains on the same track.

About every six to eight months, I run into a man who astounds me sexually, but between escapades, I'm celibate, which I don't think is any big deal. After two unsuccessful marriages, I find myself keeping my guard up, along with my underpants.

...He has all the uncanny intuitions of a psychopath. Have you ever dealt with one? It's almost like a form of mind-reading...

I figure guys are like Whitman's Samplers. I like to take a little bite out of each and then move on before the whole box gets stale.

I did discover that if you're interested in low wages, a bookstore ranks below retail clothing sales, except the hours are worse.

I love being single. It's almost like being rich.

I thought I'd go home and reread Sue Grafton. It's been a while since I last read the one about the topless dancer who gets poison injected into one of her implants." "'D' Is For Cup." "Right. Bern, you know what I wish? I wish she didn't have to stop at twenty-six. When the alphabet's used up, what happens to Kinsey?" "Are you kidding? She goes straight into doublé letters. 'AA' Is For drunks, 'BB' Is For Gun, 'CC' Is For Rider. There was a whole list in Publishers Weekly a few months back. 'PP' Is For Golden Showers, 'ZZ' Is For Topp- I can't remember them all, but it looks as though she can go on forever." "Bern, that's wonderful news." "You'll be reading about Kinsey fifty years from now," I told her. "'AAA' Is for Motorists, 'MMM' Is for Scotch Tape. You'll never have to stop.

People always love it when you say their dogs are nice. Just shows you how out of touch they are.

It's like people think just because you go to church you're not all that bright. I mean just because I'm a born-again doesn't mean I lost IQ points.

While I'm not a big fan of nature, its intractability amuses me to no end. (Kinsey Millhone)

I did an about-face and veered into the sandwich shop. What I ordered is none of your business, but it was really good.

The Latin term pro bono, as most attorneys will attest, roughly translated means for boneheads and applies to work done without charge.

I have friends who adore high heels, but I can't see the point. I figure if high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them.

maybe it was time to at least pretend to be a nicer person than i knew i was

Death is insulting, and I resented its sudden appearance, like an unannounced visit from a boorish relative.

I've never been a big fan of exercise. I just can't think of any other way to feel good." Kinsey Milhone

Being rule governed, I operate in a world filled with imaginary restraints.

I'm a born liar myself and I know how it's done. You stick as close to the truth as you can. You pretend to volunteer a few bits of information, but the facts are all carefully selected for effect.

He looked like an actor who'd star in some movie about a doomed love affair between an heiress and a park ranger. I thought it was probably inappropriate to fling myself against him and bury my nose in his chest.

Emotion doesn't travel in a straight line. Like water, our feelings trickle down through cracks and crevices, seeking out the little pockets of neediness and neglect, the hairline fractures in our character usually hidden from public view. Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.

Nothing wrong with being single when you can do as you please without objection or complaint. The presence of the fur ball was icing on the cake.

It's hard to keep passing myself off as a grown-up when a piece of me is still six years old and utterly at the mercy of authority.

It's a dangerous assumption and I know I shouldn't jump to conclusions, but it's always easier to pin suspicion on someone you dislike.

To distract myself, I thought about all the cusswords I knew and arranged them in alphabetical order.

Growing up had made her crabby, which happens to the best of us.

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don’t see a lot of people doing it.

The downside of fitness, which takes years to achieve, is how quickly it vanishes—almost instantly.

I showered and shampooed. I even shaved the requisite legs and armpits just in case I fell in a swoon and one or the other was exposed to view. (Kinsey Millhone)

She was the type who went to bars intent on conversation, while he was the type who went in hopes of being left alone.

I wish life could be edited as deftly as prose. It would be nice to go back and write a better story, correcting weaknesses and follies in the light of what I now know. What I've noticed though is that any attempt to trim out the dark matter takes away some of the good that was also buried in the muck. The past is a package deal and I don't believe there's a way to tell some of the truth without telling most.Wisdom comes at a price, and I have paid dearly for mine.

The practice of baring all, analyzing every nuance embedded in a quarrel, is a surefire way to keep an argument alive. Better to establish a temporary peace and revisit the conflict later. Often, by then, both parties have decided the issue isn’t worth the relationship.

Personally I don’t endorse the notion of mortality. It’s fine for other folk, but I disapprove of the concept for me and my loved ones. Seems unfair that we’re not allowed to vote on the matter and not one of us is excused. Who made up that rule?" - Kinsey Millhone

I'm an organism of the earth, a Taurus. I was never born of air, of water, or of fire. I'm a creature of gravity and I could feel the ground whisper. The same thing happens to me in old hotels when I'm staying on the twenty-second floor. I open a window and want to fling myself out.

I thought about the current contamination of beaches, raw sewage spilling into oceans and streams, the hole in the ozone, forests being stripped, the toxic-waste dumps, the merry plunder of mankind added to the drought and the famine that nature dishes up annually as a matter of course. It's hard to know what's actually going to get us first. Sometimes I think we should just blow the whole planet and get it over with. It's the suspense that's killing me.

I truly hate being a guest in someone's home...Worst of all, you have to 'make nice' at all hours. I don't want someone across the table from me while I'm eating my breakfast. I don't want to share the newspaper and I don't want to talk to anyone at the end of the day. If I were interested in that shit, I'd be married again by now and put a permanent end to all the peace and quiet.

The Copse at Hurstbourne is one of those fancy-sounding titles for a brand-new tract of condominiums on the outskirts of town. 'Copse' as in 'a thicket of small trees.' 'Hurst' as in 'hillock, knoll, or mound.' And 'bourne' as in 'brook or stream.' All of these geological and botanical wonders did seem to conjoin within the twenty parcels of the development, but it was hard to understand why it couldn't have just been called Shady Acres, which is what it was. Apparently people aren't willing to pay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a home that doesn't sound like it's part of an Anglo-Saxon land grant. These often quite utilitarian dwellings are never named after Jews or Mexicans. Try marketing Rancho Feinstein if you want to lose money in a hurry. Or Paco Sanchez Park. Middle-class Americans aspire to tone, which is equated, absurdly, with the British gentry.