Top 100 Tess Gerritsen Quotes
#1. Dixie Flynn may be the most kick-ass heroine ever created. Kudos to M.C. Grant for giving us the ultimate 'girl power' thriller."
- TESS GERRITSEN, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SILENT GIRL
M.C. Grant
#2. He knew that the cruelest of blows too often came with a smile.
Tess Gerritsen
#3. What happens when we get old? he wondered. Where does the kid part of us go?
Tess Gerritsen
#4. Without ties to our ancestors, we are lonely specks of dust, adrift and floating, attached to nothing and no one.
Tess Gerritsen
#5. In China, the dead are not forgotten - my relatives cheerfully pointed out all the niches of deceased friends and family, as if gesturing at the homes of the living.
Tess Gerritsen
#6. 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
#7. Be aware every morning that you may not last the day, And every evening that you may not last the night.
Tess Gerritsen
#8. 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
#9. Why do we always treat kids like the enemy?" "Because they so often behave like an alien species?
Tess Gerritsen
#10. In memory of Jim Heacock "In thy face I see the map of honor, truth, and loyalty." - William Shakespeare Henry VI, Part III
Tess Gerritsen
#11. The most intimate feeling people can share is neither love nor hate, but pain.
Tess Gerritsen
#12. 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
#13. Men that age aren't known for their superior judgment.
Tess Gerritsen
#14. Robbie Brace, a practical man, had chosen a practical field. Oh, but how it depressed him.
Tess Gerritsen
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. No kiss, no embrace, could bring two people any closer than we are right now. The most intimate emotion two people can share is neither love nor desire but pain.
Tess Gerritsen
#20. Because we bear responsibility for our own actions alone. Not for anyone else's.
Tess Gerritsen
#21. She pressed her fingers to the woman's neck and felt icy skin.
Bending close to the lips, she waited for the whisper of a breath, the faintest puff of air against her cheek.
The corpse opened its eyes.
Tess Gerritsen
#22. 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
#23. Children are like fomites." What?" "Spreading infections everywhere they go.
Tess Gerritsen
#24. When you cannot see where you are going, when you do not know your final destination, every hour is its own eternity.
Tess Gerritsen
#25. 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
#26. We are so good at killing each other, she thought. Yet we fail so miserably at love.
Tess Gerritsen
#27. Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer.
Tess Gerritsen
#28. 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
#29. She now knew her death was inevitable, and with that acceptance came liberation. The courage of the condemned.
Tess Gerritsen
#30. An hour before her shift started, an hour before she was even supposed to be there, they rolled the first corpse through the door.
Tess Gerritsen
#31. 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
#32. The human mind was expert at filling in missing details and confidently turning them into facts, even if those facts were merely imagined.
Tess Gerritsen
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. He looked at her, and she couldn't contradict him. Nor could she offer any false reassurance. Silence, at least, was honest.
Tess Gerritsen
#36. Life was too often a series of interruptions. Phone calls, family crises, other people always interrupting,
Tess Gerritsen
#37. 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
#38. ADD has turned into a catchall for all childhood misbehavior. When a student's failing in class, or he gets into mischief,
Tess Gerritsen
#39. Aside from the Rizzoli & Isles books, there are many other stories I want to write. The question is whether I'll live long enough to write them all!
Tess Gerritsen
#40. What Rizzoli thought, staring at her own image, was that she hated Elizabeth Hurley for giving women false hope. The brutal truth was, there are some women who will never be beautiful, and Rizzoli was one of them.
Tess Gerritsen
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. Some part of you, some ancient memory deep in your brain, recognizes this continent as home.
Tess Gerritsen
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. One of the best Christmas presents I ever got was the globe that I now keep right beside my desk.
Tess Gerritsen
#49. 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
#50. I met my husband, Jacob, in medical school. We married and went to live in Hawaii where his family lived. It was very beautiful, but I wasn't used to being on an island and needed wide open spaces. Eventually we moved to Maine, New England.
Tess Gerritsen
#51. Life is a series of complications. We have to deal with each one as it comes.
Tess Gerritsen
#52. I think what medical training does is it gives you the language, the tools to look up facts. I think medical training gives you a sense of how to approach a problem, how to look at symptoms and go down the list of what it might be.
Tess Gerritsen
#53. 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
#54. Where we go depends on what we know, and what we know depends on where we go.
Tess Gerritsen
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. Had she always been so insulated from human contact, like a bloom encased in frost?
Tess Gerritsen
#59. That's what makes life an adventure. Sometimes you just have to jump in and trust in the universe.
Tess Gerritsen
#60. I believe one has to get one's hand dirty or you're nothing but a hobbyist.
Tess Gerritsen
#61. My brother and I spent our childhood in movie theaters screaming. I decided early on that that was the epitome of entertainment. I'm always trying for that same level of adrenaline in my books.
Tess Gerritsen
#62. Does he think it's so easy? One smile, one touch and all is forgiven -Dr Maura Isles
Tess Gerritsen
#63. Motherhood didn't make you stronger; it made you vulnerable and afraid of what death could steal from you.
Tess Gerritsen
#64. I've just confirmed every bad joke ever told about second violin players. Question: How many second violinists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: They can't go that high. Gerda
Tess Gerritsen
#65. I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could.
Tess Gerritsen
#66. I'm a dinosaur, he thought, lumbering through a world where truthtellers
are despised.
Tess Gerritsen
#67. He had a son, but he died some years ago, on a foreign trip. His ex-wife's dead, too, and I've never seen any woman there." Nora shook her head. "It's an awful thing to think about. Dead for four days and no one even notices. That's how unconnected he seemed to be.
Tess Gerritsen
#68. We're all violent. Especially when it concerns the ones we love. They're intimately connected, love and hate.
Tess Gerritsen
#69. meat comes from the supermarket, where it's wrapped in plastic. No guts involved.
Tess Gerritsen
#70. 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
#71. The one man you most want to sleep with may be the worst choice of all.
Tess Gerritsen
#72. I know there's evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don't need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.
Tess Gerritsen
#73. It's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.
Tess Gerritsen
#74. My father said writing was a nice hobby. He strongly encouraged my brother and me to become doctors.
Tess Gerritsen
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#79. In 'Last to Die,' three children living in different cities are the only survivors when their families are slaughtered. Two years later, their foster families are murdered, and these three orphans are once again the only survivors.
Tess Gerritsen
#80. Rizzoli wanted to be heard, and so she sat shoulder to shoulder with the boys in the trumpet section.
Tess Gerritsen
#81. If you don't love him, if you don't even care about him, then seeing him now shouldn't be all that painful. Should it?
Tess Gerritsen
#82. Now they were probably telling one another: Yeah, I knew something wasn't right. Everyone's brilliant in retrospect.
Tess Gerritsen
#83. The whole world isn't out to hurt you, Jane. - Dean
Because I don't let it - Jane
Tess Gerritsen
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. Sometimes, the person who could make you happiest is the one who waits patiently in the wings.
Tess Gerritsen
#87. 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
#88. I think fiction, for me, is a way of trying to understand why people do the things they do - and trying to explain what is, at heart, illogical.
Tess Gerritsen
#89. Throughout most of my life, I've tried to downplay my Chinese heritage because I wanted so much to be an American. I was the only Asian kid in my elementary school, and I longed to be like everyone else. I insisted on American food; I was embarrassed by my mother's poor English.
Tess Gerritsen
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. '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
#95. So little time. We have so little time on this earth with the people we love.
Tess Gerritsen
#96. And like a drowning woman who chooses the black sea instead of rescue, she did not take it.
Tess Gerritsen
#97. 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
#98. 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
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