Sue Grafton Quotes
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If I'd been listening closely, I'd have caught the sound of the gods having a great big old tee-hee at my expense.
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People talk about dysfunctional families; I've never seen any other kind.
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Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.
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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.
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Pay minimum wage, you get minimum work. Nobody seems to get that.
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There are days when none of us can bear it, but the good comes around again. Happiness is seasonal, like anything else. Wait it out. There are people who love you. People who can help.
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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.
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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.
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That's the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.
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There is no sound so terrible as a man's sorrow for his own death.
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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.
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I think you'd best make your peace with the past since you've come this far. I think you know by now that you won't go back again.
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If you're unhappy, change something.
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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.
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After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with.
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I love being single. It's almost like being rich.
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People get careless when they're feeling safe.
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Grade school was perilous. ... I can see how I must have worried them. I was the kind of kid who, for no apparent reason, wept piteously or threw up on myself. On an especially scary day, I sometimes did both.
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Lucky is the spouse who dies first, who never has to know what survivors endure.
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Writing is not about making a buck, not about publishers and agents. Writing is not about feeling good. Writing is about pain, suffering, hard work, risk, and fear.
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Dream big but think small.
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Sometimes being fooled by love is worth the price. At least you know you're alive and capable of feeling, even if all you end up with is chest pain.
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The critical lessons in life hold sway whether you like it or not.
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When all else fails, cleaning house is the perfect antidote to most of life's ills.