Sue Grafton Quotes & Sayings

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

I find it so liberating when other people are rude. It makes me feel mild and lazy and mean. — Sue Grafton

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

my mother died of an overdose of sleeping pills after extensive surgery so that the cause of death was probably listed as despair. — Sue Grafton

What I could see of the apartment looked much like the office: gold high-low carpeting, Early American furniture, probably from Montgomery Ward. A painting of Jesus hung on the wall at the foot of the bed. He had his palms open, eyes lifted towards heaven- pained no doubt, by Ori's home decorating taste. — Sue Grafton

The dead are mute, but the living still have voice with which to protest their innocence. Often their objections are noisy and pious, impossible to refute since the person who could condemn them has been silenced forever. — Sue Grafton

We all do things we regret. It's part of growing up. — Sue Grafton

Lying contains the same hostile elements as a practical joke in that the 'victim' ends up looking foolish in his own eyes and laughable in everyone else's. — Sue Grafton

You never know which people will affect your life. — Sue Grafton

A man in a nylon bikini, with that little knot sticking out in front, isn't half as interesting as a man in a good-looking business suit. Charlie — Sue Grafton

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since. — Sue Grafton

Being rule governed, I operate in a world filled with imaginary restraints. — Sue Grafton

My primary lesson, however, was that I'm a solo writer, happiest when I'm making all the executive decisions. I've always been willing to rise or fall on my own merits. — Sue Grafton

Death is insulting, and I resented its sudden appearance, like an unannounced visit from a boorish relative. — Sue Grafton

I don't know what is love about and I'm not sure I believe in it anyway. — Sue Grafton

Growing up had made her crabby, which happens to the best of us. — Sue Grafton

People who've had happy childhoods are wonderful, but they're bland ... An unhappy childhood compels you to use your imagination to create a world in which you can be happy. Use your old grief. That's the gift you're given. — Sue Grafton

It's a dangerous assumption and I know I shouldn't jump to conclusions, but it's always easier to pin suspicion on someone you dislike. — Sue Grafton

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

crayon. Age had given his face a softly — Sue Grafton

We all need to look into the dark side of our nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying. — Sue Grafton

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

I've never known anyone yet who doesn't suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around ... We're all eight years old again and anything is possible. — Sue Grafton

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. — Sue Grafton

Four. I checked the other side — Sue Grafton

Another one of life's little jokes. I thought it was a tumor 'til it started to kick. — Sue Grafton

Every violent death represents the climax of one story and an introduction to its sequel. — Sue Grafton

The practice of baring all, analyzing every nuance embedded in a quarrel, is a surefire way to keep an argument alive. Better to establish a temporary peace and revisit the conflict later. Often, by then, both parties have decided the issue isn't worth the relationship. — Sue Grafton

I wondered if I'd ever be nice enough to volunteer for anything. I was hoping not. — Sue Grafton

linen slipcovers, was as white as whole milk. — Sue Grafton

I tend to place kids in a class with dogs, preferring the quiet, the smart, and the well trained. — Sue Grafton

God save us from the people who want to do what's best for us. — Sue Grafton

After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with. — Sue Grafton

Unplug yourself often and you risk losing touch with your feelings altogether. — Sue Grafton

You try to keep life simple but it never works, and in the end all you have left is yourself. — Sue Grafton

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. — Sue Grafton

Violent death is like a monster. The closer you get to it, the more damage you sustain if you survive at all. — Sue Grafton

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

Grief rolled across the space between us like a wash of salt water. — Sue Grafton

You can't go back to something once it's dead. — Sue Grafton

He stared at me. His breathing made that wheezing sound that fat people sometimes make. — Sue Grafton

The space smelled — Sue Grafton

Nothing wrong with being single when you can do as you please without objection or complaint. The presence of the fur ball was icing on the cake. — Sue Grafton

You can believe anything you like. — Sue Grafton

I left him where he was and went down the hall to the kitchenette, where I picked up the coffeepot and filled it with water. I poured the water into the reservoir and then opened a packet of coffee, the grounds neatly sealed in a filter that I tucked into the basket. I flipped the switch and stood there until I could hear the gurgling begin. — Sue Grafton

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

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

Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between being cautious and being dead. — Sue Grafton

It's like people think just because you go to church you're not all that bright. I mean just because I'm a born-again doesn't mean I lost IQ points. — Sue Grafton

Good news for me, although even in Texas I don't think impersonating a maid would be classified as a crime. — Sue Grafton

For the record, I'd like to say that I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I have a chance to get even first
Kinsey Millhone, V is for Vengeance — Sue Grafton

I don't. I take it he was homeless." Aaron shrugged. "That's my guess. A group of them have been congregating in that grassy patch across the street from the Santa Teresa Inn. Before that, they camped in the park adjacent to the municipal swimming pool." "Who called it in?" He took off his glasses and polished — Sue Grafton

To many women mistake a man's hostility for wit and his silence for depth. — Sue Grafton

One immutable law of travel is that one's arrival or departure gate is always at the extreme outer limit of the terminal, especially if your bag is heavy or your shoes have just begun to pinch. — Sue Grafton

Dream big but think small. — Sue Grafton

The Latin term pro bono, as most attorneys will attest, roughly translated means for boneheads and applies to work done without charge. — Sue Grafton

My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse. — Sue Grafton

Sometimes the hardest part of my job is the incessant reminder of the fact we're all trying so assiduously to ignore: we are here temporarily ... life is only ours on loan. — Sue Grafton

A woman should never, never, never be financially dependent to anyone, especially a man, because the minute you were dependent, you could be abused. — Sue Grafton

Grief is as contagious as a yawn. — Sue Grafton

The world is full of talented people. — Sue Grafton

Once upon a time, I'd come close to being killed in the big trash bin outside. This counts as nostalgia for someone like me (p. 317).
Kinsey Millhone in V is for Vengeance — Sue Grafton

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. — Sue Grafton

Henry is entirely invented though by now I feel he's as real as anyone I know. — Sue Grafton

It's hard to have faith in your fellow man when you're forced to look at some of his handiwork. — Sue Grafton

In my opinion, there's no condition in life that can't be ameliorated by a dose of junk food. — Sue Grafton

The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same. — Sue Grafton

While I'm not a big fan of nature, its intractability amuses me to no end. (Kinsey Millhone) — Sue Grafton

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. — Sue Grafton

Why is it that other people's plans so often seem ill thought out while our own make so much sense? I — Sue Grafton

I made the rules I figured I could be the one to break them. I thought I would write about xenophobia, a hatred of foreigners. After I stated writing the story there was not a foreigner to be had. I did not want to just stick one in there so I could get a title out of it since it seemed like cheating. I never figured out how I could get out of this dilemma so I just called it X and weaved X traits into the story. — Sue Grafton

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

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

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

As it is, we could not call mine a beautiful puss, but it does the job well enough, distinguishing the front of my head from the back. — Sue Grafton

Let's face it, life is trivial, and my guess is that dying imparts very little wisdom on those in process. — Sue Grafton

School was a source of great suffering to me, but once I learned to read, I disappeared into books, where I was a happy visitor to all the worlds that sprang full-blown from the printed page. — Sue Grafton

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

I'm an organism of the earth, a Taurus. I was never born of air, of water, or of fire. I'm a creature of gravity and I could feel the ground whisper. The same thing happens to me in old hotels when I'm staying on the twenty-second floor. I open a window and want to fling myself out. — Sue Grafton

Things can fool you sometimes. — Sue Grafton

If you're unhappy, change something. — Sue Grafton

I've never been a big fan of exercise. I just can't think of any other way to feel good. Kinsey Milhone — Sue Grafton

Poise and indifference so often look the same. — Sue Grafton

wrote him off the day he left and so did Ellen and — Sue Grafton

I thought about the current contamination of beaches, raw sewage spilling into oceans and streams, the hole in the ozone, forests being stripped, the toxic-waste dumps, the merry plunder of mankind added to the drought and the famine that nature dishes up annually as a matter of course. It's hard to know what's actually going to get us first. Sometimes I think we should just blow the whole planet and get it over with. It's the suspense that's killing me. — Sue Grafton

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

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

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

I wish life could be edited as deftly as prose. It would be nice to go back and write a better story, correcting weaknesses and follies in the light of what I now know. What I've noticed though is that any attempt to trim out the dark matter takes away some of the good that was also buried in the muck. The past is a package deal and I don't believe there's a way to tell some of the truth without telling most.Wisdom comes at a price, and I have paid dearly for mine. — Sue Grafton

I write because it's all I know how to do. Writing is my anchor and my purpose. My life is informed by writing, whether the work is going well or I'm stuck in the hell of writer's block, which I'm happy to report only occurs about once a day. — Sue Grafton

People talk about dysfunctional families; I've never seen any other kind. — Sue Grafton

There was an author who titled his books by days of the weeks and another one that used colors. Then there was Edward Gorey who wrote the book The Gashlycrumb Tinies, about the untimely death of 26 Victorian children, each representing a letter of the alphabet. I thought what a great way to link the titles. — Sue Grafton

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it. — Sue Grafton

Smile. It gives your face something to do. — Sue Grafton

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. — Sue Grafton

Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day ... and rightly so. — Sue Grafton

Haven't you ever heard of compromise?" "Oh sure," I said. "That's when you give away half the things you want. That's when you give the other guy half of what's rightfully yours. I've done that lots of times. It sucks. — Sue Grafton

Kim Bass, Receptionist, was nowhere to be seen. This was fortunate, as I was so irritated with the way she'd treated me, I might have bitten her on the arm. I'd been a biter as a kid and I can still remember the feel of flesh between my teeth. It's like biting a rubber bathing cap, in case you're curious. — Sue Grafton

Some people die accidentally. It's a fact. — Sue Grafton

Whatever the surface appearances, most human beings come equipped with convoluted emotional machinery. With intimacy, the wreckage starts to show, damage rendered in the course of passions colliding like freight trains on the same track. — Sue Grafton