Sue Grafton Quotes
-
Pay minimum wage, you get minimum work. Nobody seems to get that.
-
I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.
-
People talk about dysfunctional families; I've never seen any other kind.
-
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.
-
People in California seem to age at a different rate than the rest of the country. Maybe it's the passion for diet and exercise, maybe the popularity of cosmetic surgery. Or maybe we're afflicted with such a horror of aging that we've halted the process psychically.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There is no sound so terrible as a man's sorrow for his own death.
-
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.
-
That's the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.
-
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.
-
People get careless when they're feeling safe.
-
Dream big but think small.
-
If you're unhappy, change something.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Sometimes I claim I write because I put in an application at Sears and they've never called back.
-
When all else fails, cleaning house is the perfect antidote to most of life's ills.
-
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.
-
I love being single. It's almost like being rich.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Lucky is the spouse who dies first, who never has to know what survivors endure.