Sue Grafton Quotes

84 Sourced Quotes

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
It never pays to deal with the flyweights of the world. They take far too much pleasure in thwarting you at every turn.

Sue Grafton
I hate nature. I really do. Nature is composed entirely of sticks, dirt, fall-down places, biting and stinging things, and savageries too numerous to list. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Man has been building cities since the year oughty-ought, just to get away from this stuff.

Sue Grafton
Built into bad news is that sense of profound disbelief. The mind struggles to absorb the bare facts, defending itself against the larger implications.

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

Sue Grafton
He smelled like something that spent the winter in a cave.

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

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

Sue Grafton
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
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.

Sue Grafton
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
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
Society values cooperation over independence, obedience over individuality, and niceness above all else.

Sue Grafton
There's nothing quite as irksome as someone else's mess.

Sue Grafton
Who knows what part we play in other people's dreams?

Sue Grafton
Mildred was a big woman, angry and insecure, an abrasive woman, who marched through life hoarding grudges like bad debts on which she could eventually collect.

Sue Grafton
Clouds were piled up like heads of cauliflower in a roadside stand.

Sue Grafton
She was short and round, and looked like someone whose eating habits had long ago outstripped any fat-burning activities.

Sue Grafton
Age plays cruel tricks on the human face; all our repressed feelings become visible on the surface, where they harden like a mask.

Sue Grafton
Earlene's handshake consisted of laying her fingers passively across mine. It was like having a half pound of cooked linguini placed in your palm for safekeeping.

Sue Grafton
Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between being cautious and being dead.

Sue Grafton
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.

Sue Grafton
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
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