Sue Grafton Quotes

84 Sourced Quotes

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

Sue Grafton
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.

Sue Grafton
Life was reduced to its four basic elements: air, food, drink, and a good friend.

Sue Grafton
Pay minimum wage, you get minimum work. Nobody seems to get that.

Sue Grafton
School was a source of great suffering to me, but once I learned to read, I disappeared into books, where I was a happy visitor to all the worlds that sprang full-blown from the printed page.

Sue Grafton
The style is an anomaly in this town, falling as it does between the Spanish, the Victorian, and the pointless.

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

Sue Grafton
Personally I don't endorse the notion of mortality. It's fine for other folk, but I disapprove of the concept for me and my loved ones. Seems unfair that we're not allowed to vote on the matter and not one of us is excused. Who made up that rule?

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

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

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

Sue Grafton
In my personal life I lean toward surly retorts and vicious long-standing grudges. I try not to act on these impulses, but I confess to the feelings. In this regard, Kinsey is a far better creature than I am.

Sue Grafton
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
This was a woman who didn't take death seriously. In its aftermath, she'd come along to do the dishes and tidy up the living room, but she probably wouldn't devote a lot of time to the hymn selection for the funeral service.

Sue Grafton
He had no sense of theater. His delivery was so slow and so methodical it was like reading the entire Bible through a microscope.

Sue Grafton
Wherever there is sex, we work to create a relationship that's worthy of it.

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

Sue Grafton
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.

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

Sue Grafton
One of the things I've learned about this process is that you have to give everything away every single time. You can't hold back.... there's always a sense of consuming yourself.

Sue Grafton
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
She took a moment to stub out her cigarette, blowing the final stream of smoke to one side. This, for a smoker, constitutes etiquette.

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

Sue Grafton
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.

Sue Grafton
The clouds hung above the mountains like puffs of white smoke left in the wake of a giant old-fashioned choo-choo train.

Sue Grafton
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.

Sue Grafton
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?

Sue Grafton