Top 35 Iris Johansen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Hatred can eat at you until there’s nothing left, until you become the thing you hate.”

— Iris Johansen

2. “Anticipation makes pleasure more intense.”

— Iris Johansen

3. “Alcohol is how boring people have fun.”

— Iris Johansen

4. “By assuming a cheerful outlook you could sometimes fool even yourself into believing everything was all right.”

— Iris Johansen

5. “I can’t be easy. It’s not my nature. But it’s my nature to love you.”

— Iris Johansen

6. “The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. Im caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points.”

— Iris Johansen

7. “In the end, we all have to decide what we’re willing to give up for payback. We all have parents or grandparents or children who will need us. Agonizing decisions sometimes. You have to weigh the memories and debt against what’s being taken from you.”

— Iris Johansen

8. “I don’t believe God will punish you for looking differently at the pattern of life. God is good, it’s man who is evil. – Ware.”

— Iris Johansen

9. “Ellijay, hadn’t she known.”

— Iris Johansen

10. “I am more of a suspense writer. A mystery writer solves mysteries. I am a high suspense writer.”

— Iris Johansen

11. “Etienne, didn’t worry enough, Jules thought in despair. Ever since childhood it had been Jules who was the serious one, the one who had to accept the responsibility while Etienne ambled along through life with endearing blitheness. “You arranged for the men to be waiting at the church?” “Of course.” “And you told them nothing?” “Only that they would be paid well for the work. And I parked the motorboat.”

— Iris Johansen

12. “All those years, all the frustration, just sapped the life out of him. No one is going to do that to me.”

— Iris Johansen

13. “You don’t give up on people because they’re not what you want them to be. Not if you love them.”

— Iris Johansen

14. “What a beautiful treasure tears can be. – Kadar den Arnaud.”

— Iris Johansen

15. “That’s why we all have to live every moment as if it were our last and not close ourselves off.”

— Iris Johansen

16. “You wore what you had the money to buy, and then, if anyone looked down his nose at you, you found a way to tweak that nose – again with the utmost style.”

— Iris Johansen

17. “Every day should be an adventure, not a treadmill.”

— Iris Johansen

18. “I write ‘by the seat of my pants.’ I love to do research. I am inspired by contemporary writers and contemporary events. I live in the real world.”

— Iris Johansen

19. “I have it.” She got into the passenger seat of the security van.”

— Iris Johansen

20. “That’s what’s most frightening. You can live your life in the best way, the most moral way possible, and it doesn’t make any difference. A madman chooses you at random and takes away everything. It’s not fair.”

— Iris Johansen

21. “I can’t do anything else but my.”

— Iris Johansen

22. “No, but I wish I did. I wish I believed in something,” Bradford said wistfully. “It would be pleasant, don’t you think?”

— Iris Johansen

23. “He stopped. “You’re upset. I’ll shut up and leave you.”

— Iris Johansen

24. “He had never dreamed anyone would ever care enough to venture into the darkness to pull him into the light. He felt bewildered and awkward and filled with a strange sense of wonder. And a stranger sense of grace.”

— Iris Johansen

25. “Enough of this soul-searching. What would be, would be. She could only do what she thought was right.”

— Iris Johansen

26. “They said no one knew a man as well as a woman who slept with him.”

— Iris Johansen

27. “If your feet are firmly planted on the grount you’ll never be able to dance.”

— Iris Johansen

28. “I was just as voracious a writer as I was a reader.”

— Iris Johansen

29. “Writers are always critical of themselves and I’m no exception. I always feel that maybe I could have done better.”

— Iris Johansen

30. “But it’s natural for men to compete against each other. We’ve been doing it since the cave days. Why else do we have wars? Wars are competition, no matter what the politicians call them.”

— Iris Johansen

31. “I’d want to hold you if you were going to lead me down to hell. Because if that’s where you were, that’s where I’d want to be.”

— Iris Johansen

32. “Gradually, she had realized that this was just another wound that would heal if she didn’t hold it close, but released the pain and not let it poison her.”

— Iris Johansen

33. “You try to be selfish because you’re afraid of letting anyone too near. To guard themselves is the way of people whose instinct is to nurture and protect. – Kadar den Arnaud.”

— Iris Johansen

34. “Taking a life diminishes the taker. – Kadar den Arnaud.”

— Iris Johansen

35. “He chuckled as he realized how he’d rationalized betrayal into gallantry. Damn, he was a good lawyer. But.”

— Iris Johansen

36. “Certainly more dangerous.”

— Iris Johansen