Top 100 Tess Gerritsen Quotes
#1. I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.
Tess Gerritsen
#2. God, it's like reality's completely shifted on me. I used to think I was standing on such solid ground. If I wanted something badly enough, I just worked like hell for it. Now I can't decide what to do, which move to make. All the things I counted on aren't there for me anymore.
Tess Gerritsen
#3. My father said writing was a nice hobby. He strongly encouraged my brother and me to become doctors.
Tess Gerritsen
#4. It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.
Tess Gerritsen
#5. With every year that I grow older, I also draw closer to (my loved ones) to the day when we will once again be together. So I march through the deepening shadows, serene and unafraid, because I know that at the end of my journey they will be waiting for me.
Tess Gerritsen
#6. meat comes from the supermarket, where it's wrapped in plastic. No guts involved.
Tess Gerritsen
#7. I'm a dinosaur, he thought, lumbering through a world where truthtellers
are despised.
Tess Gerritsen
#8. Does he think it's so easy? One smile, one touch and all is forgiven -Dr Maura Isles
Tess Gerritsen
#9. That's what makes life an adventure. Sometimes you just have to jump in and trust in the universe.
Tess Gerritsen
#10. I think that, for physicians who want to become writers, they have the material, the smarts, they have the logic, they know the stories; it's just a matter of being able to connect with their emotional sides - that's the key to writing good fiction.
Tess Gerritsen
#11. I have minor characters who are Asian-American, and I've been using them throughout my career, but they've never taken center stage, they've never been really powerful, they've never expressed some of the experiences I had growing up in the U.S. Johnny Tam is the first one.
Tess Gerritsen
#12. Some people just couldn't commit to their own health. Instead they wasted their energy worrying about things they could do nothing about.
Tess Gerritsen
#13. No matter how much you try to maintain order in your life, no matter how careful you are to guard against mistakes, against imperfections, there is always some smudge, some flaw, lurking out of sight. Waiting to surprise you.
Tess Gerritsen
#15. The hunting of monsters is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who feel bound by such trivial doctrines as law or national borders.
Tess Gerritsen
#16. That's what falling in love really amounted to, your brain on drugs. Adrenaline and dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. Chemical insanity, celebrated by poets.
Tess Gerritsen
#17. And like a drowning woman who chooses the black sea instead of rescue, she did not take it.
Tess Gerritsen
#18. So little time. We have so little time on this earth with the people we love.
Tess Gerritsen
#19. 'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry and 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think that says a lot about an author's writing.
Tess Gerritsen
#20. I have hidden my race for 22 books. I have hidden behind my married name, which is very Caucasian, because I didn't feel safe coming out with it. I didn't feel that the market would really accept me. I think I felt it's time to start bringing in an Asian-American point of view.
Tess Gerritsen
#21. There's that unpredictability factor, that chance that something completely unexpected - something amazing - could happen. That's what makes life an adventure. Sometimes you just have to jump in and trust the universe.
Tess Gerritsen
#22. I spent my childhood watching every scary movie that Hollywood ever made. And I think that gave me the best education for storytelling. It also made me want to reproduce the scary moments that I felt, sitting in a theater at the age of 5.
Tess Gerritsen
#23. Mom and I often talked about the trip we'd someday take together to the 'city of eternal spring' where she was born. In Kunming, she said, the fruits are sweeter, the mountains look like Chinese paintings, and the weather is always perfect.
Tess Gerritsen
#24. My childhood was spent in my local library in a San Diego suburb. It's where I became a writer - by 1st becoming a reader!
Tess Gerritsen
#25. I'd been writing stories since I was a child. I wrote little books for my mom and bound them myself with needle and thread. Mostly, they were about my pets.
Tess Gerritsen
#26. Sometimes, the person who could make you happiest is the one who waits patiently in the wings.
Tess Gerritsen
#27. When one hears hoofbeats, medical students are taught, one must think of horses, not zebras. But the doctor who sees my blood count will surely think of horses. He will arrive at a perfectly logical conclusion. It will no occur to him that, this time, it is truly a zebra galloping by.
Tess Gerritsen
#28. There is no better test of character than when you're tossed into crisis. That's when we see one's true colors shine through. So I try my best to make my characters personally involved in the plot, in a way that stresses them and tests them.
Tess Gerritsen
#29. The whole world isn't out to hurt you, Jane. - Dean
Because I don't let it - Jane
Tess Gerritsen
#30. Now they were probably telling one another: Yeah, I knew something wasn't right. Everyone's brilliant in retrospect.
Tess Gerritsen
#31. Rizzoli wanted to be heard, and so she sat shoulder to shoulder with the boys in the trumpet section.
Tess Gerritsen
#32. The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.
Tess Gerritsen
#33. Children are like fomites." What?" "Spreading infections everywhere they go.
Tess Gerritsen
#34. But death wouldn't deter her killer. It would whet his appetite. He'd look at her corpse and see only an object of desire. Someone he can control. She doesn't resist him. She is cool, passive flesh, yielding to any and all indignities. She is the perfect lover. The
Tess Gerritsen
#35. Only with maturity did I come to appreciate my own Chinese roots: not just the food and the ancient history, but also the philosophy of child-rearing and the respect for education and knowledge.
Tess Gerritsen
#36. Evil doesn't die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we've been touched by it once, it doesn't mean we're immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.
Tess Gerritsen
#37. Charles threw down the knife. Its thud was lost in the high-spirited bedlam of young men let loose upon a task so gruesome, the only sane response was perverse frivolity.
Tess Gerritsen
#38. Maybe it's because I can't have him that I feel safe wanting him. He's beyond my reach, so he won't hurt me.
Tess Gerritsen
#39. She was the only woman in the homicide unit, and already there had been problems between her and another detective, charges of sexual harassment, countercharges of unrelenting bitchiness.
Tess Gerritsen
#40. I always write on unlined typing paper and write the first draft in longhand, using cheap Bic pens. I try to write about four pages a day, which usually yields a first draft in six months. I don't plot ahead of time, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants for the first draft.
Tess Gerritsen
#41. I was an anthropology major in college, and I've had a lifelong fascination with Egyptology, mummies, and all sorts of bizarre cultural practices.
Tess Gerritsen
#42. Without ties to our ancestors, we are lonely specks of dust, adrift and floating, attached to nothing and no one.
Tess Gerritsen
#43. He knew that the cruelest of blows too often came with a smile.
Tess Gerritsen
#44. What happens when we get old? he wondered. Where does the kid part of us go?
Tess Gerritsen
#45. I'm trained in science, believe in logic, and like to think there's an explanation for everything. And I'm truly not really at ease with other people.
Tess Gerritsen
#47. A project like 'Rizzoli & Isles' is something you can't pursue. It's something that comes to you ... I like to call it 'fairy dust.' And it happened without my having to do anything.
Tess Gerritsen
#48. Only by the shuddering of the bed did Toby realize the girl was sobbing. Molly herself made no sound; it was as though her grief was trapped in a jar, her cries inaudible to anyone but her.
Tess Gerritsen
#49. All those mounted heads in the living room," said Jane. "And he ends up hanging, like some dead animal. I'd say we've got a theme going here.
Tess Gerritsen
#50. Think of what it means to manually strangle someone. How personal it is. The close contact. Skin to skin. Your hands against her flesh. Pressing her throat as you feel her life drain away.' Rizzoli
Tess Gerritsen
#51. ADD has turned into a catchall for all childhood misbehavior. When a student's failing in class, or he gets into mischief,
Tess Gerritsen
#52. She met his gaze, and what she saw in his eyes scared her, because at that instant she saw both possibility and heartbreak. She was ready for neither.
Tess Gerritsen
#53. Life was too often a series of interruptions. Phone calls, family crises, other people always interrupting,
Tess Gerritsen
#54. He looked at her, and she couldn't contradict him. Nor could she offer any false reassurance. Silence, at least, was honest.
Tess Gerritsen
#55. My dad's cooking was magic in the kitchen. But eventually over the years, his personality changed and his ability to remember recipes failed. He became paranoid and thought people were stealing from him, when often he was just misplacing things.
Tess Gerritsen
#56. Your blood reveal your most intimate secrets. Are you dying of leukimia or AIDS? Did you smoke cigarette or drink a glass of wine in the last few hours? Are you prozac because you're depressed, or Viagra because you can't get it up?
Tess Gerritsen
#57. I shy away from showing cruelty on the page. A lot of the violence in my books actually happens off stage. The police come on to the scene after the event has occurred.
Tess Gerritsen
#58. When you're a fifty-year-old woman, no one really bothers to look at you anymore, much less value your opinion. It's hard on the old ego. But damn, it does make it easy to get away with a lot.
Tess Gerritsen
#61. IF INDEED THESE VARIOUS ATTACKS IN DIFFERENT STATES ARE LINKED, then we're dealing with a set of highly complex ritual behaviors," said Dr. Lawrence Zucker. A criminal psychologist who served as consultant to Boston PD,
Tess Gerritsen
#62. Jane remained in her chair thinking about justice, about how the dead never benefited from it. For them it always comes too late.
Tess Gerritsen
#63. Sometimes, the stars line up, the gods smile, and love gets a fighting chance. Just a chance. That's all it can really hope for. No guarantees, no certainties
Tess Gerritsen
#64. The most dangerous enemy in the world is the one you do not recognize.
Tess Gerritsen
#65. We never know until the beast of opportunity is staring us in the face.
Tess Gerritsen
#66. My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me.
Tess Gerritsen
#67. Based on the timing, the circumstances. In July 1970, William Maitland vanished from the face of the earth. In August of the same year, we heard the first reports of a foreign pilot flying for the enemy. Running weapons and gold.
Tess Gerritsen
#68. Look into his mind, his universe. We may think it's sick, but for him, this place is a little slice of paradise. A place where the dead are laid to rest. Just the place the Dominator would come. He walks around here and probably imagines a whole harem of sleeping women right beneath his feet.
Tess Gerritsen
#69. Medicine is probably one of the best backgrounds for a writer to find stories. I always think cops and docs have the best background because we see so much of human behavior, such a range of human emotions.
Tess Gerritsen
#70. Her technique was not perfect. Here and there he heard an off-pitch note, and her run of sixteenths was uneven. But her attack was fierce, her bow digging into the strings with such confidence that even her mistakes sounded intentional, every note played without apology.
Tess Gerritsen
#71. Fierce-looking, a coal-eyed brunette with a gaze direct as lasers. She
Tess Gerritsen
#72. When everything goes wrong in our lives, it's natural to look around for someone -or something- to blame.
Tess Gerritsen
#73. We are not as impervious as we think we are. - Dr Maura Isles
Tess Gerritsen
#74. That's what I imagined, a giant game park with comfortable lodges and roads. At a minimum, roads. According to the website, there'd be "bush camping" involved, but I pictured lovely big tents with showers and flush toilets. I didn't think I'd be paying for the privilege of squatting in the bushes.
Tess Gerritsen
#76. You can study a face all you want, but you never really know what lies beneath the mask.
Tess Gerritsen
#77. There are hazards to every job, just like there are hazards to getting up in the morning. Driving to work, walking to the mailbox. Boarding a plane... The surprise isn't that we die. The surprise is how and when we die.
Tess Gerritsen
#78. For years I've wanted to write a book about mummies, and had been following the science of mummy CT scans when the premise for 'The Keepsake' occurred to me: what if an 'ancient' mummy turns out to have a bullet in its leg? How does a modern murder victim get turned into a mummy?
Tess Gerritsen
#79. We dream our dreams, she thought, and sometimes they take us places we never anticipate.
Tess Gerritsen
#80. I organise jam sessions every month. We have an open session, so everyone knows about it, and we can get as many as 30 people showing up at the house. Somebody will play a tune, and everyone will pick up on it. My best friends are all musicians.
Tess Gerritsen
#81. I believe that every experience, every wrong decision, teaches us something. That's why we shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes.
Tess Gerritsen
#82. The best heroes in the world are the reluctant ones. Courage isn't fearlessness - it's acting in the face of fear.
Tess Gerritsen
#83. 'I am a bad mother.' Every Christmas, this is what I think because the holiday season fills me with such anxiety. I'm sure that other mothers are happily baking cookies, decorating trees, and finding perfect gifts for everyone.
Tess Gerritsen
#84. Some people make choices hoping for the best; Korsak had made a choice simply to avoid the worst.
Tess Gerritsen
#85. My mother is an immigrant from China, and she filled my head with stories about ghosts and fighting monks in China, so the world of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' was a very familiar one.
Tess Gerritsen
#86. We're all struggling to stay upright, Maura thought. Resisting the pull of temptation,just as we fight the pull of gravity. And when we finally fall, it's always such a surprise.
Tess Gerritsen
#87. Beware the ignorant, Lorenzo. They're the most dangerous enemy of all, because they are everywhere.
Tess Gerritsen
#88. Muscles burned and her knees ached, but she did not stop. She owed that much to him and would not abandon him a second
Tess Gerritsen
#89. We dream our dreams, and sometimes they take us to places we never anticipate. But they are our dreams, and we go where they lead.
Tess Gerritsen
#90. My father was second-generation Chinese-American, born in 1923 in California. My mother emigrated to the States from China when she was in her early twenties, in part to escape the political turmoil in China.
Tess Gerritsen
#91. After years of feeling like a misfit, I've realized that the world is full of other misfits, all of us identifying with Hobbits - - the little guys whom no one else respects. And who quietly end up changing the course of history.
Tess Gerritsen
#92. Ha! Kids! You have no idea what you put your parents through, either. Wait till you have your own, you'll see. That's when you'll know what it really feels like." .. "What what feels like?" ... "Love," said Angela.
Tess Gerritsen
#93. Alzheimer's is literally killing us, and the only way to fight this 'crime' is through a groundswell of people who continue to raise their voices and funds to ensure it gets the attention it deserves.
Tess Gerritsen
#94. The heart makes its choices without weighing the consequences. It doesn't look ahead to the lonely nights that follow.
Tess Gerritsen
#95. Including four mice posed with tiny china cups, seated around a miniature table. A Mad Hatter's grotesque tea party.
Tess Gerritsen
#96. Prey animals such as zebras and antelope have eyes at the sides of their heads, but a predator's eyes face forward. Always show the cat your face. Let her see where your eyes are, and she'll know you're a predator, too. She'll think twice before attacking.
Tess Gerritsen
#97. I raised two sons, and I know that even though they're bigger and stronger than I am, they're still little boys inside. They still cry, they still hurt. So whenever I write a male character, no matter how 'heroic' he may be, I think of my sons. And I remember that every man was once a little boy.
Tess Gerritsen
#99. I was a writer first, and knew I'd be a storyteller at age seven. But since my parents are very practical, they urged me to go into a profession that would be far more secure, so I went to medical school.
Tess Gerritsen
#100. Is this all we are? A necklace of chemicals? Where, in the double helix, does the soul lie?
Tess Gerritsen
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
