Sue Grafton famous quotes

Train yourself to listen to that small voice that tells us what's important and what's not.
-- Sue Grafton

#Voice #Important

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

#Change #Sympathy #Baby

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

#Fear #Passion #Dark

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.
-- Sue Grafton

#Ideas #Sheep #Goats

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They're just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.
-- Sue Grafton

#Writing #Two #Brain

The critical lessons in life hold sway whether you like it or not.
-- Sue Grafton

#Life Lesson #Lessons #You Like It

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

#Believe #Police #Dinner

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

#Family #People #Dysfunctional Family

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

#Mistake #Men #Silence

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

#Autumn #Years #Eight

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

#Happiness #Grief #Imagination

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

#Jobs #Fool #Reader

If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.
-- Sue Grafton

#Girlfriend #Men #High Heels

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

#Grief #Grieving #Space

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

#Unhappy

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

#Moving #Long #Mystery

That's the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.
-- Sue Grafton

#Luck #Way #Bears

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

#Lying #Eye #Elements

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.
-- Sue Grafton

#Hate #People #Rage

Too much virtue has a corrupting effect.
-- Sue Grafton

#Too Much #Virtue

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

#Artist #Two #Mystery

Writing is self-taught. Consulting other people only teaches you to depend on their reactions, which may or may not be legitimate. Quit looking for approval ... Learn to evaluate your own work with a dispassionate eye ... the lessons you acquire will be all the more valuable because you've mastered your craft from within.
-- Sue Grafton

#Writing #Eye #Self

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

#Pain #Class #People

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

#Junk #Opinion #Junk Food

The beauty of word processing, God bless my word processor, is that it keeps the plotting very fluid. The prose becomes like a liquid that you can manipulate at will. In the old days, when I typed, every piece of typing paper was like cast in concrete.
-- Sue Grafton

#Pieces #Paper #Liquid

Pay enough for anything and it passes for taste.
-- Sue Grafton

#Pay #Taste #Enough

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

#Insecure #People #Special

There are laws for everything except the harm families do.
-- Sue Grafton

#Law #Harm

Emotion doesn't travel in a straight line. Like water, our feelings trickle down through cracks and crevices, seeking out the little pockets of neediness and neglect, the hairline fractures in our character usually hidden from public view.
-- Sue Grafton

#Character #Views #Water

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

#Moving #Guy #Littles

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

#People #Want #Busybodies

There is no sound so terrible as a man's sorrow for his own death.
-- Sue Grafton

#Men #Sorrow #Sound

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.
-- Sue Grafton

#Years #Population #Dishonesty

The memory is like orbiting twin stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.
-- Sue Grafton

#Stars #Memories #Dark

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

#Writing #Sometimes #Claims

There's really no such thing as an 'ex-cop' or a cop who's 'off-duty' or 'retired.' Once trained, once indoctrinated, a cop is always alert, assessing reality in terms of its potential for illegal acts.
-- Sue Grafton

#Reality #Law Enforcement #Cop

When all else fails, cleaning house is the perfect antidote to most of life's ills.
-- Sue Grafton

#Perfect #House #Cleaning

Writing is a process and you must trust the process! Fear and anxiety are part of that process along with the enthusaism and the good days and the joy and the passion and the great hopes you have for a book. But when you run into problems, when you get stuck or scared, you must trust that that is part of how a book comes to pass, and what you need to do is get very still and quiet because Self will tell you how to get out of a hole you've dug for yourself.
-- Sue Grafton

#Running #Book #Writing

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

#Home #Law #Four

Happiness is seasonal, like anything else
-- Sue Grafton

#Happiness

grief is an illness I can't recover from.
-- Sue Grafton

#Grief #Illness

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

#Block

Some people can't see the color red. That doesn't mean it isn't there,
-- Sue Grafton

#Mean #Color #People

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.
-- Sue Grafton

#Kissing #Live Your Life #Ass

The Jungian therapist taught me the difference between the ego and the shadow. I realized I'd been so busy being a good girl that I'd completely detached from my shadow. It's something we all have, and it's where all the creative juices are.
-- Sue Grafton

#Girl #Writing #Differences

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

#Long #Fans #Records

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.
-- Sue Grafton

#Believe #Opportunity #Long

Perhaps when we're forced to forfeit what we own, we lose any sentimental associations. Perhaps pawning our valuables frees us in the same way a house fire destroys not only our worldly goods, but our attachment to what's gone.
-- Sue Grafton

#Attachment #Fire #House

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

#Stars #Memories #Dark

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

#Smell #Supper

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

#Inspiring Love #Littles #Bed

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

#Simple #Trying #Simple Life

People get careless when they're feeling safe.
-- Sue Grafton

#People #Feelings #Safe

Everything happens for a reason, but that doesn't mean there's a point.
-- Sue Grafton

#Mean #Everything Happens For A Reason #Reason

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

#Men #Should #Minutes

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.
-- Sue Grafton

#Letting Go #Believe #Mean

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

#Heart #Dark #Black

Give yourself time to get better.
-- Sue Grafton

#Writing #Giving #Get Better