Top 160 Patricia Cornwell Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “And are they consistent with the injuries inflicted by the electric chair, with.”

— Patricia Cornwell

102. “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

103. “Some people simply want company.”

— Patricia Cornwell

104. “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

105. “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

106. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

108. “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

109. “Even if you are a best-seller you feel insecure because it is all so unpredictable.”

— Patricia Cornwell

110. “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

111. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

113. “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

114. “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

115. “People often say they don’t dream, when it’s more accurate to say that they don’t remember their dreams. It gets under our skin, Kay. All of it does. We just manage to cage in most of the emotions so they don’t devour us.”

— Patricia Cornwell

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

— Patricia Cornwell

117. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

119. “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

120. “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

121. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

123. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

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

— Patricia Cornwell

126. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

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

— Patricia Cornwell

129. “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

130. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

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

— Patricia Cornwell

133. “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

134. “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

135. “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

136. “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

137. “Absolute power has corrupted and the absence of checks and balances seems complete.”

— Patricia Cornwell

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

— Patricia Cornwell

139. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

141. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

143. “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

144. “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

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

— Patricia Cornwell

146. “If you’re never an original thinker how can you possibly get in trouble? If you’re banal and unoriginal enough you’ll get promoted.” We.”

— Patricia Cornwell

147. “Her case in particular haunts me. Despite decades of autopsies and crime scenes, I can honestly say I’ve never encountered the extreme brutality shown in the only existing scene photographs from the Ripper case.”

— Patricia Cornwell

148. “Some people should never be gone, and those that should hang around forever.”

— Patricia Cornwell

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

— Patricia Cornwell

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

— Patricia Cornwell