Sue Grafton Quotes - Page 4

any mystery writer is both magician and moralist ... two species of artist in short supply.

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.

Sometimes I claim I write because I put in an application at Sears and they've never called back.

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

I only get writer's block about once a day.

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

The character of Rosie is based on a woman who used to live in the same apartment building I lived in many years ago. She's taken on a life of her own, of course.

Writing isn't about the destination-writing is the journey that transforms the soul and gives meaning to all else.

There's nothing quite as irksome as someone else's mess.

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 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.

My notion of an elegant table is you don't leave the knife sticking out of the mayonnaise jar.

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.

You can't make anyone love you and you can't stop anyone from dying.

I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.

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.

Poise and indifference so often look the same.

Society values cooperation over independence, obedience over individuality, and niceness above all else.

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.

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.

Kinsey was never a lawyer. She's strictly blue collar.

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.

There is, apparently, some law of nature decreeing that all home construction must double in its projected cost and take four times longer than originally anticipated.

I focus on the writing and let the rest of the process take care of itself. I've learned to trust my own instincts and I've also learned to take risks.

grief is an illness I can't recover from.