Sue Grafton Quotes

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

~ 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

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

~ Sue Grafton

Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.

~ Sue Grafton

You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.

~ 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

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

nothing wrong with a lie or two when the situation demanded it

~ Sue Grafton

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

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

Personally, I'd rather grow old alone than in the company of anyone I've met so far. I don't experience myself as lonely, incomplete, or unfulfilled, but I don't talk about that much. It seems to piss people off--especially men. (Kinsey Millhone)

~ 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

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

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

People always love it when you say their dogs are nice. Just shows you how out of touch they are.

~ Sue Grafton

All the little birdies had flown out of this man's tree.

~ Sue Grafton

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

The tricky part of any lie is trying to figure out how you'd behave if you were innocent.

~ Sue Grafton

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

I love being single. It's almost like being rich.

~ 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

Books are like movies of the mind and it's better to leave Kinsey where she is.

~ Sue Grafton