Top 100 Kerry Greenwood Quotes
#1. Sometimes it's hard to start, but once it gets going, once you reach the tipping point - usually between chapter seven and nine - then it's like hanging onto a large snowball as it hurtles downhill.
Kerry Greenwood
#3. Both had suggestive bulges in their pockets which told of either huge genitalia or trousered pistols.
Kerry Greenwood
#4. It's always good business practice to eliminate any potential avengers.
Kerry Greenwood
#5. If you are not scared then there is no merit in being brave.
Kerry Greenwood
#7. Not the dead ye have to be concerned about! Beware of the Living!
Kerry Greenwood
#8. This was cheering. The real world was still there, it still contained puppies being puppies and cats being cats.
Kerry Greenwood
#9. She had always found platypuses irresistible proof that God likes a joke as much as anyone else.
Kerry Greenwood
#10. In the 1970s, I used to buy opals and moonstones at the Queen Victoria Market, which were seen as old-fashioned and too heavy at the time.
Kerry Greenwood
#11. If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, Wake up and write the book!
Kerry Greenwood
#12. Had she been at all used to blushing, she would have blushed, but she wasn't, so she didn't.
Kerry Greenwood
#13. When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters.
Kerry Greenwood
#14. Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.
Kerry Greenwood
#15. I fell in love with words in all languages, and I read everything I could find, particularly myths and legends and histories and archeology and any novels.
Kerry Greenwood
#16. I was determined to become a criminal lawyer and help look after the poor.
Kerry Greenwood
#17. No, really," said Jack, blushing to show that he wasn't embarrassed at all. "Do
Kerry Greenwood
#18. The world is too harsh a place to contemplate directly, without a cushion of fancy and belief.
Kerry Greenwood
#19. I research every possible bit of information I can find. Then I use about a tenth of it. But I have to know all the information first; otherwise, I'm not going to convince myself, and if I can't convince myself, then I'm not going to convince the reader.
Kerry Greenwood
#20. She looked as plump and self-confident as the city pigeons outside, and as sure of her place.
Kerry Greenwood
#22. There are only so many stories in the world ... Duplication of plots is bound to happen because most writers have read very extensively in their genre and have become aware they are adding an extra layer to the meta-narrative, finding a new spin on the original.
Kerry Greenwood
#23. I remind my American readers that biscuits in England and Australia are crispy flat things such as you call cookies, and the soft doughy things you call biscuits are what we call scones. And they say we speak the same language ...
Kerry Greenwood
#24. One only has a few fragrant nights of spring. Store your memories for when you are old. You will enjoy them again under such a moon as this.
Kerry Greenwood
#25. Clothes were terribly important in the '20s. They really were an arbiter of who you were and how much money you had: an indicator of social status.
Kerry Greenwood
#26. She wondered, briefly, if she was beautiful, decided she was and blew a kiss to her reflection
Kerry Greenwood
#27. I used to tell my three younger siblings stories because that was my household chore, and I told long stories in installments because it was easier and more fun than making up a new story every night. I loved it.
Kerry Greenwood
#28. His dad had always told him that the red-faced were blusterers, not to be taken seriously. 'But if you see a bloke who's pale and shaking, son,' Bert's father had instructed, 'then run like blazes, because he might flamin' kill you.
Kerry Greenwood
#30. This is what 'forever' means, my dear. You don't walk into danger on your own. Not anymore.
Kerry Greenwood
#31. A publisher saw one of my historical novels and thought I would write an admirable detective story, so she offered me a two-book contract, and I grabbed it.
Kerry Greenwood
#32. The difficulty, my asclepid, is not to govern people, but to make them govern themselves,
Kerry Greenwood
#33. Sleeping children gained weight according to the depth of their sleep.
Kerry Greenwood
#34. One invited artists to social events, but only for the pleasure of their company. To invite singers or dancers to perform for their supper was inexpressively vulgar, and deserved a prompt and stinging rebuke.
Kerry Greenwood
#35. With all the sweetness of a chocolate-coated razor-blade.
Kerry Greenwood
#36. Miss? Miss Phryne? Are you all right?' 'Come in, Dot. I'm fine. Some son of unmarried parents just tried to kidnap me.' 'What did you do with the body, Miss?
Kerry Greenwood
#37. I didn't want to write a grown-up account of Gallipoli. I wanted to find out what would happen if I looked at Gallipoli through the eyes of an innocent.
Kerry Greenwood
#38. Her heart was beating appreciably faster, and she took more rapid breaths, but she was enjoying herself. Adventuresses are born, not made.
Kerry Greenwood
#39. Lust was a reliable emotion, but greed was altogether simpler to satisfy and you got to keep your clothes on.
Kerry Greenwood
#40. Lin reflected how much power mere money had. Lying in the purse it was just coins. Let loose from confinement, it was blankets against the cold, and candied chestnuts. It was an old lady clad in a new dress with hibiscus flowers on it.
Kerry Greenwood
#41. Champagne,' she added to the hovering wine waiter. 'The Widow '23.
Kerry Greenwood
#42. Her reason might have collapsed by now, of course, nothing like a few days of people telling you that you are mad and deluded when you know that you are telling the truth to turn the brain.
Kerry Greenwood
#43. I don't think the process of writing books is in any way sensible. It's not logical, and it's not reasonable. I do write very fast, and I just do it in a binge. Other people binge-drink; I binge-write.
Kerry Greenwood
#44. I'm a duty solicitor, so I can't fix someone's life; all I can do is fix the problem I've got in front of my eyes.
Kerry Greenwood
#45. I like writing books. I really love words. I love to read.
Kerry Greenwood
#47. Phryne opened her book and sipped her lemonade. Agatha Christie. What a plotter. Phryne wished briefly that the real world was so amenable to being solved. ***
Kerry Greenwood
#48. I always like cases when the victim's been practically begging to be killed. It means I don't have to be sorry for him.
Kerry Greenwood
#49. A young man in one's hotel bedroom is capable of being explained, but a corpse is always a hindrance.
Kerry Greenwood
#50. He looked like a kobold who had just been told that he was mythical.
Kerry Greenwood
#51. You've been making a regular habit of flinging yourself in front of bullets," she remarked amiably. "It's really not a good custom. Curb this tendency to self-immolation.
Kerry Greenwood
#52. Money can't buy happiness but it can vastly improve the quality of your misery.
Kerry Greenwood
#53. It took determination to be really strange. That, or absinthe before breakfast every day.
Kerry Greenwood
#54. I went to a basic school, which had children from all corners of the world, and met my best friend and had to learn Greek because she didn't speak English.
Kerry Greenwood
#55. I've always been in love with Melbourne. When I was 12, I was taken into the city by my grandmother to go to the ballet for the first time.
Kerry Greenwood
#56. She dropped on his chest with both knees and vengefully banged his head on the floor, once to knock him out and twice because it made her feel better.
Kerry Greenwood
#57. No cook can ignore the opinion of a man who asks for three helpings. One is politeness, two is hunger, but three is a true and cherished compliment.
Kerry Greenwood
#60. I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? Coming for to carry me home A band of Angels coming after me Coming for to carry me home.
Kerry Greenwood
#61. I hate clocks. They tick. Other things make noises in their time and need, but clocks mechanically beat the seconds to death.
Kerry Greenwood
#62. If you look at the map, there's Thrace, Greece, Bulgaria, and there's tiny Gallipoli. It is such a small part of the whole peninsula, and yet you only hear about this little tiny bit.
Kerry Greenwood
#63. Phryne read a detective story, frequently going back because she suddenly found herself reading a conversation between two characters she had not met before -
Kerry Greenwood
#64. And is it any wonder that the poor woman broke out into fairies when she had been deprived of any fiction in her youth?
Kerry Greenwood
#65. I remember talking to John Mortimer, and he said he was relying on Rumpole to keep him in his old age; well, I'm doing the same with Phryne - she's my mainstay.
Kerry Greenwood
#66. There are good sailors. Well, some good sailors. In a way they are ideal as husbands. They drop in every six months for a wild celebration, then they drop out again before one gets bored with their company or annoyed with by their habits.
Kerry Greenwood
#67. Phryne looked at a large statue of St. Joseph, for whom she had always had an admiration. It can't have been easy, managing a girl with an inexplicable pregnancy. But he had accepted the word of the Lord and not put her away. Later generations had not been so forgiving.
Kerry Greenwood
#68. I believe in absolutely nothing except yeast and the inevitability of politicians.
Kerry Greenwood
#69. Come along,' I told the donkey. 'There's a precedent for this.' Manny
Kerry Greenwood
#70. I don't steal stories. If I'm a plagiarist, so is Hitchcock. And Tolkien. And Shakespeare.
Kerry Greenwood
#71. Never trust a man who bites the heads off chickens is probably a good sound rule of practice.
Kerry Greenwood
#72. If she's a flapper," mused the sergeant, wiping Passionate Rouge lipstick off his blameless mouth, "then I'm all for 'em, and I don't care what Mum says.
Kerry Greenwood
#73. She was sensible of the fact that while there were two sets of masculine arms to fall into, and one of them her current pet, Phryne had fallen into Dot's.
Kerry Greenwood
#74. I think it is rather heroic to go into a war zone where everyone is trying to kill you, and you have no way of shooting back.
Kerry Greenwood
#75. Amazement could go no further. If Phryne had ridden in on a unicorn he would merely have remarked on its elegant hocks and golden horn and suggested that she enter it weight for age at Felmington. Well, no, not a unicorn. Not Phryne. A dragon, perhaps. He was sure that she could tame a dragon.
Kerry Greenwood
#76. It was always easier to genuinely praise than to try and find something nice to say about rubbish.
Kerry Greenwood
#77. As a child, I would demand that visitors to our house tell me a story. I was intensely interested in everything - still am.
Kerry Greenwood
#79. They are not aesthetic like a puppy or a kitten. In fact, they always look drunk to me. Look at that one - you'd swear he had been hitting the gin.
Kerry Greenwood
#80. I have a theory that kitchens, once they reach a certain level of complexity, attract new gadgets into their orbit, like planets. Only this can account for the fact that I own two melon ballers.
Kerry Greenwood
#81. Phryne was getting out of the car. Dot closed her eyes. Miss Fisher was about to happen to someone again.
Kerry Greenwood
#82. Her face was white, her eyes blazed like emeralds, and no one who saw her had any intention of saying anything but 'Immediately' to anything she ordered.
Kerry Greenwood
#83. I'm concealing a lot of things. That's what a lady does.
Kerry Greenwood
#84. Even the reeking dark in the lion's cage seemed precious and infinitely preferable to whatever lay beyond. She would go out like the flame of a candle. Where does the candle flame go when the candle is blown out?
She laid her painted face against the iron bars and bared her teeth at death.
Kerry Greenwood
#85. Tinker wrote neatly, though his spelling was not good, Ruth's recipes would never fail for confusion between 'add sugar' and 'seethe', but Jane's writing looked like an intoxicated inky spider had staggered across the page on the way to the bar for another drink. Which it really didn't need.
Kerry Greenwood
#86. First, a bath. I'm feeling soiled. Too much contact with cold reality, I think.
Kerry Greenwood
#87. Bert was short and stout. Cec was tall and lanky. Between them, there was nothing that they could not reach.
Kerry Greenwood
#88. I don't like the idea of being killed by fools. I shall have to ensure that this does not happen.
Kerry Greenwood
#89. You know how I feel about pretty boys - there aren't enough of them in the world as it is - we can't have people wantonly removing them.
Kerry Greenwood
#90. The young will no longer be advised by the old," she said to the hall porter.
"That is because we advised them to die," said the hall porter.
Kerry Greenwood
#92. Phryne was feeling most displeased with a species to which, she reminded herself, she belonged.
Kerry Greenwood
#93. He'd pull a door off its hinges rather than work out how to turn a key.
Kerry Greenwood
#94. Now we will all die. What a pity. I haven't done half the wicked things I wanted to do, and the ones I have done I haven't done anything like enough.
Kerry Greenwood
#95. The first Goddess, Gaia, who was the earth, wide hipped, big bellied, the womb of the human race, the nurturing breast of all humans, the opulent and voracious beginning of all things female.
Kerry Greenwood
#96. I have been reading crime books ever since I was a child, but I had never tried to write one.
Kerry Greenwood
#97. The Colonel was far too firmly married and full of military honours to be a threat to Phryne's virtue, or what remained of it, so she agreed.
Kerry Greenwood
#98. Good morning, Meroe,' I said, dusting uselessly at my tracksuit pants. 'Might I interest you in today's special, pre-floured kitten?
Kerry Greenwood
#99. I decided that if I want to write about a female hero in the 1920s, I'm going to have to give her all the advantages I can because she has serious disadvantages in being a woman. I wasn't going to have her cowed or overawed by class, so she had to be titled.
Kerry Greenwood
#100. My work is very carefully researched. Sometimes I have to ditch an idea because I can't prove it.
Kerry Greenwood
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
