Top 35 Jonathan Kellerman Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Life is like a prism. What you see depends on how you turn the glass.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

2. “The stress of grad school can drive anyone temporarily mad.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

3. “In matters of healing, the body initiates and the mind follows.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

4. “Therapist’s dilemma: those who need help the most, run the farthest from it.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

5. “All of us are like locks. No matter how strong the bolt, there’s always a key out there that opens it.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

6. “Just because others have it worse doesn’t mean you have to suffer in silence.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

7. “40 Words for Sorrow is brilliant-one of the finest crime novels I’ve ever read. Giles Blunt writes with uncommon grace, style and compassion and he plots like a demon. This book has it all-unforgettable characters, beautiful language, throat-constricting suspense.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

8. “I’d long thought that a surfeit of sensitivity could be a killing thing, too much insight malignant in its own right. The best survivors – there are studies that show it – are those blessed with an inordinate ability to deny. And keep on marching.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

9. “He called Alex Shimoff, a Hollenbeck detective with serious artistic talent whom he’d used before. When Shimoff’s cell and home lines didn’t pick up, he left a message and tried Petra Connor at Hollywood Division. Same story.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

10. “Literally and figuratively. Balance is important to you.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

11. “Whatever fame a novelist my attain, it’s always kind of an anonymous one. I can go anywhere, and no one knows who I am...”

— Jonathan Kellerman

12. “Siblings are thrown together by chance. Anything from love to hate can follow.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

13. “The characters emerge from my rather twisted mind. That’s another enjoyable part of the job making stuff up.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

14. “I don’t practice, but I am still officially in paediatrics. I keep in touch with journals, and I have a very good data bank of medical information and there is a key thing for a writer knowing where to go. I know where to go to get the information that I need.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

15. “Psychopaths, skillful as they are at manipulating others, have trouble with emotional regulation and generally screw up at either extreme: theatrical histrionics or cold stoicism.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

16. “If dust was present, it was hiding in fear.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

17. “Icy people often freeze themselves in order to hold in check a volcanic stew of disturbing and conflictual feelings. Emotional hibernation, if you will. Crack the ice and the stuff inside comes pouring out with all the discipline of molten lava.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

18. “Maybe we’re just prisoners of our biology.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

19. “Time spent researching varies from book to book. Some novels require months, even years of research, others very little. I try to do most of my research before I begin but inevitably questions emerge during the writing.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

20. “Government is like junior high. Your status depends upon whom you’re able to persecute.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

21. “But in the words of a great philosopher, you can’t always get what you want.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

22. “Friendly, yes. Friend, never.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

23. “Sometimes things don’t fall into place just because you do a good job.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

24. “At first, when a child meets something that scares him, the fear grows, like a wave. But when he goes into the water and swims – gets used to the water – the wave grows small. If we pull the child away when the wave is high, he never sees that, never learns how to swim and remains afraid. If he gets a chance to feel strong, in control, that’s called coping. When he copes, he feels better.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

25. “That was the thing about knowing people’s secrets: It could make them not like you.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

26. “If you couldn’t get the outcome you wanted, torture ’em with process.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

27. “Sleep. The ultimate resistance.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

28. “It’s simply not relevant to my role as an advocate, and even to begin to think along those lines would hamper me in the execution of my duties.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

29. “The key to excellent report writing’ he said between chews, ’is to take every bit of passion out of it. Use an extra heaping portion of superflously extraneous tautological redundancies in order to make it mind-numbingly boring. So that when one’s superior officers read it, they zone out and start skimming and maybe don’t notice the fact that one has been spinning one’s wheels since the body turned up and hasn’t solved a goddamn thing.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

30. “Most people aren’t overly afflicted with curiosity. It separates the creative and the tormented from the rest of the pack. –.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

31. “Family. It’s an incurable disease.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

32. “It didn’t feel difficult at the time because I was so charged up about both books. Afterward, however, I was pretty tired. In a good way, like after a great workout.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

33. “Without sounding pompous, I really do feel that I have a set of standards that I must adhere to, even leaving aside considerations of what the readers expect.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

34. “Each novel is harder than its predecessor because I must work harder at not repeating myself. However, I enjoy the challenge. This is the greatest job in the world.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

35. “It was shaping up as a beautiful morning. The last thing I wanted to hear about was murder.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

36. “What if food really was love and world peace could be a reality?”

— Jonathan Kellerman

37. “Tonight, the choice was obvious.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

38. “I went along agreeably until all that was left was agreeability.”

— Jonathan Kellerman

39. “Wide-cut slacks gave her a sunken appearance from behind, calling to mind an old remark of Moffett’s. Legs for days but ass for the next five minutes.”

— Jonathan Kellerman