Top 100 Sue Grafton Quotes
#1. We all do things we regret. It's part of growing up.
Sue Grafton
#2. When it comes to work, it isn't so much what we do or how much we're paid; it's the satisfaction we take in doing it.
Sue Grafton
#3. We understood the consequences of any given action, we could exercise discretion, thus restructuring our fate.
Sue Grafton
#4. I'm always aware that under the spritely twitter of birds, bones are being crunched and ribbons of flesh are being stripped away, all of it the work of bright-eyed creatures without feeling or conscience. I don't look to nature for comfort or serenity.
Sue Grafton
#5. I may have people lying to me, but since I don't really know the truth, I can't be sure.
Sue Grafton
#6. its embrace. The sky still claims them and we who honor them will hold them dear from this day forward.
Sue Grafton
#7. Pretending to be 'normal' is a lot harder than you think.
Sue Grafton
#8. Get old, you might as well not worry about your dignity. Anybody talks about dignity for old folks has never been around one as far as I can tell. You can keep your spunk, but you have to give up your vanity early on.
Sue Grafton
#9. Pay minimum wage, you get minimum work. Nobody seems to get that.
Sue Grafton
#10. 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.
Sue Grafton
#11. There's always something else. That's what makes life so much fun.
Sue Grafton
#12. It's been my observation, after years in the [insurance] business, that a certain percent of the population simply can't resist the urge to cheat.
Sue Grafton
#13. I caution writers all the time to slow down and pay more attention to the work in front of them than to the end result. I don't think you write one book and get anywhere. I think you write five books and then maybe you are finally on the right path.
Sue Grafton
#14. The Latin term pro bono, as most attorneys will attest, roughly translated means for boneheads and applies to work done without charge.
Sue Grafton
#15. I know it's true because I made it up myself.
Sue Grafton
#16. Whenever Jehovah's Witnesses appear at my door, I always ask for their addresses first thing, assuring them that I'll be around later in the week to plague them with my views. While
Sue Grafton
#17. I don't know much about the Presbyterian faith, but the atmosphere alone was enough to put me off predestination.
Sue Grafton
#18. I attended the University of Louisville my freshman year, transferred to what was then Western Kentucky State Teachers College for my sophomore and junior years, and then graduated from the University of Louisville in the summer of 1961.
Sue Grafton
#19. You can always push people around, but it's not a good idea. Better to let them volunteer information for reasons of their own. You get more that way.
Sue Grafton
#20. This was because his badge was attached to his belt in close proximity to his fly, and I didn't want to seem too interested. "Sorry to barge in unannounced," he went on.
Sue Grafton
#21. Grief rolled across the space between us like a wash of salt water.
Sue Grafton
#23. I made a stop, ducking into the supermarket to pick up milk, Diet Pepsi, bread, eggs, and toilet paper. I was into my siege mentality, looking forward to pulling up the drawbridge and waiting out the rain. With luck, I wouldn't have to go out for days.
Sue Grafton
#24. And that touched off something else ... old sorrows, good friends gone down into the earth. Sometimes I picture death as a wide stone stair-case, filled with a silent procession of those being led away.
Sue Grafton
#25. You can't go back to something once it's dead.
Sue Grafton
#26. Why is it that other people's plans so often seem ill thought out while our own make so much sense? I
Sue Grafton
#27. She was the type who went to bars intent on conversation, while he was the type who went in hopes of being left alone.
Sue Grafton
#28. I wondered if I'd ever be nice enough to volunteer for anything. I was hoping not.
Sue Grafton
#29. It's pitiful to have a life in which junk food is awarded the same high status as sex.
Sue Grafton
#30. I pictured a section of the ladies' auxiliary cookbook for Sudden Death Quick Snacks ... Using ingredients one could keep on the pantry shelf in the event of tragedy.
Sue Grafton
#31. 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.
Sue Grafton
#33. All you have to do is wait until she's asleep
Sue Grafton
#34. Any mystery writer is both magician and moralist ... two species of artist in short supply.
Sue Grafton
#35. crayon. Age had given his face a softly
Sue Grafton
#38. 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.
Sue Grafton
#39. I love being single. It's almost like being rich.
Sue Grafton
#40. Pam is petite, a bristly little chihuahua of a human being. She is the only woman I ever met who claims to be ten years older than she actually is so everyone will tell her how young she looks.
Sue Grafton
#41. 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.
Sue Grafton
#42. The beauty of word processing, God bless my word processor, is that it keeps the plotting very fluid. The prose becomes like a liquid that you can manipulate at will. In the old days, when I typed, every piece of typing paper was like cast in concrete.
Sue Grafton
#43. The downside of fitness, which takes years to achieve, is how quickly it vanishes - almost instantly.
Sue Grafton
#44. 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.
Sue Grafton
#45. 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
Sue Grafton
#47. She held out her hand and we sat there together like grade-school kids on a field trip. "Line up in twos and no talking." Life itself is a peculiar outing. Sometimes I still feel like I need a note from my mother.
Sue Grafton
#48. Kinsey was never a lawyer. She's strictly blue collar.
Sue Grafton
#49. 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.
Sue Grafton
#50. Society values cooperation over independence, obedience over individuality, and niceness above all else.
Sue Grafton
#51. 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)
Sue Grafton
#52. 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.
Sue Grafton
#53. People can hold out just so long and then they fold.
Sue Grafton
#54. Pay enough for anything and it passes for taste.
Sue Grafton
#55. While I'm not a big fan of nature, its intractability amuses me to no end. (Kinsey Millhone)
Sue Grafton
#56. There's a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain.
Sue Grafton
#58. Henry is entirely invented though by now I feel he's as real as anyone I know.
Sue Grafton
#59. I've never written about my husband, Steve, or any of my children because I know them all too well. I see them in all their complexities which makes them impossible to render on the printed page.
Sue Grafton
#60. Some death is as silent as the flight of a bird, some prey as unprotesting as a knot of rags. The
Sue Grafton
#61. Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.
Sue Grafton
#62. 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.
Sue Grafton
#64. Life is hard. Life hurts. So what? You tough it out. You get through and then you'll feel good again.
Sue Grafton
#65. Sometimes the noes are just as important as the yeses because they represent cul-de-sacs, allowing you to narrow your field of inquiry until you stumble into the heart of the maze.
Sue Grafton
#66. The truth is, I could no more dictate her nature than she could dictate mine. Kinsey's happy as she is and she doesn't need to be rescued, improved, or saved.
Sue Grafton
#67. He has all the uncanny intuitions of a psychopath. Have you ever dealt with one? It's almost like a form of mind-reading ...
Sue Grafton
#68. So far, I felt like I had a lapful of confetti and the notion of piecing it all together to make a picture seemed very remote indeed.
Sue Grafton
#69. Maybe life is just a straight shot from the horrors of grade school to the horrors of the nursing home.
Sue Grafton
#70. Life is simple. You're the one making things complex.
Sue Grafton
#71. Smile. It gives your face something to do.
Sue Grafton
#72. was adept, but it had been a while since
Sue Grafton
#73. My job as the writer is to fool you. Your job as the reader is to see if you can catch me at it.
Sue Grafton
#74. Books are like movies of the mind and it's better to leave Kinsey where she is.
Sue Grafton
#75. I did an about-face and veered into the sandwich shop. What I ordered is none of your business, but it was really good.
Sue Grafton
#76. Good news for me, although even in Texas I don't think impersonating a maid would be classified as a crime.
Sue Grafton
#77. Who knows what part we play in other people's dreams?
Sue Grafton
#78. Built into bad news is that sense of profound disbelief. The mind struggles to absorb the bare facts, defending itself against the larger implications.
Sue Grafton
#79. It is a truth of human nature that we can ponder life's mysteries for only so long before we lose interest and move on to something else.
Sue Grafton
#81. He stared at me. His breathing made that wheezing sound that fat people sometimes make.
Sue Grafton
#82. What could smell better than supper being cooked by someone else?
Sue Grafton
#83. I don't want to write formula. I don't want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part.
Sue Grafton
#84. He opened his coat to reveal his badge, but I confess I didn't peer closely enough to commit the number to memory. This
Sue Grafton
#86. I like difficulty. It's what makes my job fun.
Sue Grafton
#87. My notion of an elegant table is you don't leave the knife sticking out of the mayonnaise jar.
Sue Grafton
#88. Results for I looked as respectable as the bum they were booking. I fancied I smelled better, but perhaps not. I've noticed that most of us don't have a clue what we smell like to other people. It's almost as though our noses blank us out in self-defense.
Sue Grafton
#89. Life was reduced to its four basic elements: air, food, drink, and a good friend.
Sue Grafton
#90. People in California seem to age at a different rate than the rest of the country. Maybe it's the passion for diet and exercise, maybe the popularity of cosmetic surgery. Or maybe we're afflicted with such a horror of aging that we've halted the process psychically.
Sue Grafton
#91. 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.
Sue Grafton
#92. 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.
Sue Grafton
#93. As long as you have sufficient toilet paper, how far wrong can life go?
Sue Grafton
#94. I'm not sure Kinsey has changed in these first twelve books. I think the reader learns more about her, but from Kinsey's perspective, only three years have passed while the rest of us have been getting older at a much faster clip.
Sue Grafton
#95. I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.
Sue Grafton
#96. If high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them.
Sue Grafton
#97. The only colors I could see were the vibrant primary hues of the pinball machine, where a cartoon spacewoman with big conical breasts straddled the earth in a formfitting blue space suit and thigh-high yellow boots. Behind her, a big red dildo-shaped spaceship was just blasting off for the moon.
Sue Grafton
#98. Grade school was perilous ... I can see how I must have worried them. I was the kind of kid who, for no apparent reason, wept piteously or threw up on myself. On an especially scary day, I sometimes did both.
Sue Grafton
#99. I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.
Sue Grafton
#100. Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.
Sue Grafton
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