Top 160 Patricia Cornwell Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “If you can create a weapon that causes enough fear the fear itself can cause damage that’s as paralyzing and destructive as any physical device like a bomb or a laser gun. Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently.”

— Patricia Cornwell

102. “This neighborhood used to be all white,” Marino said. “I remember when I first came to Richmond this was a good area to live. Lots of decent, hardworking folks who kept their yards real nice and went to church on Sunday.”

— Patricia Cornwell

103. “The older I got, the more I was of the opinion that love can be experienced in many different ways. There is no right or wrong way to love, only in how it is expressed.”

— Patricia Cornwell

104. “My niece has a habit of telling you she’s leaving after she’s already gone.”

— Patricia Cornwell

105. “Like every other mortal who has ever been touched by suicide, I had the fallacious belief that I could have done something to stop it.”

— Patricia Cornwell

106. “The public is blaming the city officials, who in turn have to find someone else to blame. It’s the nature of the beast. If the police, the politicians, can pass the buck on down the line, they will.”

— Patricia Cornwell

107. “Maybe nothing phased her until she was beaten to death on her marble floor, and I envision a blitz attack.”

— Patricia Cornwell

108. “Then I will myself to feel nothing at all. It’s not helpful to react the way a normal person would. I banish what will interfere with my clinical discipline and reason, I run it off and far away from me. After all these years I’m good at emptying myself out.”

— Patricia Cornwell

109. “And are they consistent with the injuries inflicted by the electric chair, with.”

— Patricia Cornwell

110. “She was grossly overweight, though I could tell from her refined features that she may have been quite pretty in a younger, leaner life.”

— Patricia Cornwell

111. “I was reminded of the old pain, a pain once so intense it was physical.”

— Patricia Cornwell

112. “Some people simply want company.”

— Patricia Cornwell

113. “Strung himself up from the rafters in the barn,” she went on as we worked. “Was being treated for a drink problem and depression. More of the same. Unemployment, women, drugs. They.”

— Patricia Cornwell

114. “I put his toll at a dozen, maybe as many as twenty or possibly more, and he didn’t slaughter only prostitutes – or “Unfortunates,” as they were called. It’s also not true that he struck exclusively in the East End slums or even just in London. He killed in multiple cities, and he quickly escalated to mutilation, dismemberment and possibly cannibalism. His victim selection began to include children, and he boasted about all of it in his written communications that for the most part were ignored.”

— Patricia Cornwell

115. “I disagreed. Some people feel things more deeply than others, and some people feel things the rest of us don’t. This is what causes isolation, the sense of being apart, different.”

— Patricia Cornwell

116. “Can’t I just drift now and then?” I didn’t want to be present.”

— Patricia Cornwell

117. “I’ve never taken a scalpel to a dead body.”

— Patricia Cornwell

118. “The body was not yet fully rigorous and was still slightly warm as I began swabbing any area that a washcloth might have missed. I.”

— Patricia Cornwell

119. “Odors have their own story to tell and the secret is to block them out after they’re no longer relevant.”

— Patricia Cornwell

120. “Ms. Fuller explained to me that the reason Sickert gave Ms. Pash for his divulging such a fantastic and shocking story was he wanted the truth “known but not during his lifetime.” To prove his point, Sickert supposedly showed Ms. Pash a number of “murder paintings that he later burned,” Ms. Fuller told me.”

— Patricia Cornwell

121. “You can’t cure a chipped plate. All you can do is live with it or throw it out.”

— Patricia Cornwell

122. “If you have enough bad things happen to you in life, others begin to privately question if you invite them, are a magnet that attracts misfortune or danger or dysfunction.”

— Patricia Cornwell

123. “No, Lucy. Your mother doesn’t really love men. They are a symptom of her obsessive quest of finding somebody who will make her whole. She doesn’t understand that she has to make herself whole.”

— Patricia Cornwell

124. “You can never be real sure who’s all right and who ain’t... It’s real hard to know these days, that’s for damn sure.”

— Patricia Cornwell

125. “I find it difficult to attend autopsies. Especially the smells.”

— Patricia Cornwell

126. “Confessing I didn’t, I scribbled the directions on the notepad I always kept by the phone. I hung up and my feet were already on the floor as adrenaline hit my nerves like espresso. The house was quiet. I grabbed my black medical bag, scuffed and worn from years of use. The.”

— Patricia Cornwell

127. “As for the crab, honey, listen up. One egg slightly beaten, one-half teaspoon dry mustard, a dash or two of Worcestershire sauce, four unsalted soda crackers, crushed. Chop up an onion, a Vidalia if you’re still hoarding any from summer. One green pepper, chop that. A teaspoon or two of parsley, salt and pepper to taste.” “Sounds fabulous,” I gratefully said. “Bev, what would I do without you?” “Now you gently mix all that together and shape it into patties.”

— Patricia Cornwell

128. “Maybe he needs a reason to go to the trouble. Maybe you have to want something so badly that you’re finally willing to be less selfish.”

— Patricia Cornwell

129. “There’s a penalty for trying to do what’s right. The dark forces don’t like it, and stress will make you sick.”

— Patricia Cornwell

130. “I was a small insect faced with a formidable male network web in which I might be ensnared but never a part.”

— Patricia Cornwell

131. “Aggression is about competing. Competing for the male, for the female, competing for the person most fit for breeding. Competing for resources such as food and shelter. Competing for power, because without hierarchy there can’t be social order. In other words, aggression occurs when it’s profitable.”

— Patricia Cornwell

132. “Shutting down is denial. When you deny the past, you will repeat it.”

— Patricia Cornwell

133. “Tactical engagement principle number one is if you don’t have a clear and decisive objective the operation becomes disconnected and unfocused.”

— Patricia Cornwell

134. “We rarely are conscious of those primitive anxieties that creep out from under reason. And the only way to banish them is to turn on all the lights.”

— Patricia Cornwell

135. “People who are unhappy in relationships carry about them a distinct air of discontent and isolation.”

— Patricia Cornwell

136. “Most of us feel isolated and paranoid during stressful times. We feel alone in the wilderness.”

— Patricia Cornwell

137. “Serenity comes from knowing what you can and can’t change,” Nancy.”

— Patricia Cornwell

138. “My fans want me to talk to them. And even if they want to be critical, I want to hear what they’ve got to say.”

— Patricia Cornwell

139. “I felt the emotion of the crime. It wasn’t anger. It was worse than that.”

— Patricia Cornwell

140. “When I first studied the photographs I could not tell what she looked like or even the color of her hair. All I saw was red.”

— Patricia Cornwell

141. “Our government spies and lies. Those trusted to uphold and enforce the law use it to their advantage instead.”

— Patricia Cornwell

142. “When you look into the abyss, it also looks into you.”

— Patricia Cornwell

143. “I won’t put myself in a position where I’m vulnerable.”

— Patricia Cornwell

144. “When I was at college there were two things I vowed I’d never do. One was go to a funeral and the other was deal with computers. And then I ended up being a computer programmer in a morgue.”

— Patricia Cornwell

145. “Diethyl ether, nitrous oxide, and chloroform.” She names the three earliest known general anesthetics. “Chloroform is easily acquired if one is involved in an industry or works in a lab where it’s used as a solvent.”

— Patricia Cornwell

146. “All this when I know human relationships are not founded on reason any more than my roses are fertilized with debate. I know seeking asylum behind the wall of intellect and rationality is a selfish retreating into self-protectiveness at the expense of another’s well-being.”

— Patricia Cornwell

147. “THE QUESTIONS I’m asked most frequently have nothing to do with my Scarpetta novels or my personal life. People want to know why I remain convinced that Jack the Ripper was the celebrated British artist Walter Richard Sickert.”

— Patricia Cornwell

148. “When all else fails, I cook. Some.”

— Patricia Cornwell

149. “In the first person, the readers feel smart, like it’s them solving the case.”

— Patricia Cornwell

150. “War has become our national industry, like automotives and steel and the railroads once were.”

— Patricia Cornwell