Sue Grafton citations

“C'est la clef de tout bon management. Fais gaffe au gars qu'est au-dessous de toi dans le boulot. Ne le mets pas au parfum.”

“Aucun d'entre nous n'est à l'abri de la tentation quand se présente l'occasion d'être malhonnête.”

“Nous appartenons à une société pieusement préoccupée par les droits des criminels alors que les vies de leurs victimes ont été saccagées sans souci du prix de la douleur et de la souffrance.”

“La violence est une forme de spectacle que seuls les indigents peuvent s'offrir. Le prix du billet n'est pas coûteux. A l'affiche, c'est toujours la tragédie de la vie et de la mort […] la grande terreur des mères qui regardent angoissées, dans les coulisses. Souvent, ce sont les spectateurs qui tombent sous les balles perdues.”

“Le crime engendre une dépendance. Les récidivistes sont motivés par le manque plus que par la nécessité.”

“Ce qu'il y a de pénible dans l'amour, c'est le vide qu'il laisse une fois qu'il a disparu.”

“Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“There's a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain.”

“I know there are people who believe you should forgive and forget. For the record, I'd like to say I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I'm given the opportunity to get even first.”

“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them."

"I don't believe in ghosts," I said, faintly.

"Some people can't see the color red. That doesn't mean it isn't there," she replied.”

“The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same.”

“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)”

“Everything happens for a reason, but that doesn't mean there's a point.”

“To many women mistake a man's hostility for wit and his silence for depth.”

“Smile. It gives your face something to do.”

“Lucky is the spouse who dies first, who never has to know what survivors endure.”

“Pretending to be 'normal' is a lot harder than you think.”

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

“You never know which people will affect your life.”

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

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

“It's pitiful to have a life in which junk food is awarded the same high status as sex.”

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

“I don’t want her to have a cat because she’ll end up talking baby talk to the cat. That’s the way it is, and how can a P. I. do that?”

“No one with a happy childhood ever amounts to much in this world. They are so well adjusted, they never are driven to achieve anything.”

“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.”

“Our family histories are like fairy tales we're told from a very early age. In the tale, we're cast as hero or victim, as the infant rescued or abandoned, discounted or deified. From this we form an image of ourselves and our relationship to the world. Often it's a story we act out over and over again, trying to make the ending come out right instead of the way it did.”

“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.”