Tess Gerritsen Quotes

The heart makes its choices without weighing the consequences. It doesn't look ahead to the lonely nights that follow.

~ Tess Gerritsen

The dead do not hurt you, only the living do.

~ Tess Gerritsen

I’m a dinosaur, he thought, lumbering through a world where truthtellersare despised.

~ Tess Gerritsen

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

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

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

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

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

But something-luck, fate, conspiracy, whatever you want to call it-has thrown us together. He leaned forward, his gaze never leaving her face. Of all the crazy places in the world, here we are, at the same table, in the same dirty Vietnamese cafe. And... He paused, his brown eyes warm, his crooked smile a fleeting glimmer in his seriousness. I'm beginning to think it's time we gave in and followed this crazy script. Time we followed our instincts.

~ Tess Gerritsen

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

He looked at her, and she couldn't contradict him. Nor could she offer any false reassurance. Silence, at least, was honest.

~ Tess Gerritsen

Some people make choices hoping for the best, Korsak had made a choice simply to avoid the worst.

~ Tess Gerritsen

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

It's just something I'll have to live with... The possibility of getting sick. Not knowing if I'll live another two years or forty years. I keep telling myself, I could walk outside and get hit by a bus. That's the way life is. Just surviving another day comes with its own risk.

~ Tess Gerritsen

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

When you shine a bright light, a secret loses all its power.

~ Tess Gerritsen

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

Only the forgotten are truly dead.

~ Tess Gerritsen

You know that movie, where the little boy says 'I see dead people'?The Sixth Sense.Well, I see them all the time, and I'm getting tired of it. That's what's ruined my mood. Here it is, almost Christmas, and I didn't even think about putting up a tree, because I'm still seeing the autopsy lab in my head. I'm still smelling it on my hands. I come home on a day like this, after two postmortems, and I can't think about cooking dinner. I can't even look at a piece of meat without thinking of muscle fibers. All I can deal with is a cocktail. And then I pour the drink and smell the alcohol, and suddenly there I am, back in the lab. Alcohol, formalin, they both have that same sharp smell.

~ Tess Gerritsen

'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

One of the best Christmas presents I ever got was the globe that I now keep right beside my desk.

~ Tess Gerritsen

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

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

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

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

I think of myself as a fairly logical, scientific and somewhat reserved person. Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner who appears in five of my books, is me. Almost everything I use in describing her, from her taste in wine to her biographical data, is taken from my own family. Except I don't have a serial killer as a mother!

~ Tess Gerritsen

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

Writing is very much an emotional process; it requires you to be very in touch with your feelings. That is the opposite of what you're taught as a medical doctor. We're supposed to be detached and logical. Maybe because I started off as a writer and then became a doctor, I'm able to integrate those two.

~ Tess Gerritsen

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

Because my dad's Chinese-American, and they're very concrete, he said, 'There's no money to be made in literature.' So he told me to go into the sciences. And I was a good girl. And I did what Daddy said. And that's how I ended up being a doctor. But you know, you just can't stamp out that desire to tell stories.

~ Tess Gerritsen