Top 160 Sue Grafton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If your mind isn’t open, keep your mouth shut too.”

— Sue Grafton

2. “I love being single. It’s almost like being rich.”

— Sue Grafton

3. “Dream big but think small.”

— Sue Grafton

4. “Ideas are easy. It’s the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.”

— Sue Grafton

5. “Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.”

— Sue Grafton

6. “If you’re unhappy, change something.”

— Sue Grafton

7. “Lucky is the spouse who dies first, who never has to know what survivors endure.”

— Sue Grafton

8. “Give yourself time to get better.”

— Sue Grafton

9. “That’s the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.”

— Sue Grafton

10. “Ghosts don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They’re present among us because we won’t let go of them.”

— Sue Grafton

11. “Sometimes being fooled by love is worth the price. At least you know you’re alive and capable of feeling, even if all you end up with is chest pain.”

— Sue Grafton

12. “A woman should never, never, never be financially dependent to anyone, especially a man, because the minute you were dependent, you could be abused.”

— Sue Grafton

13. “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

14. “People get careless when they’re feeling safe.”

— Sue Grafton

15. “Thinking is hard work, which is why you don’t see many people doing it.”

— Sue Grafton

16. “There’s really no such thing as an ‘ex-cop’ or a cop who’s ‘off-duty’ or ‘retired.’ Once trained, once indoctrinated, a cop is always alert, assessing reality in terms of its potential for illegal acts.”

— Sue Grafton

17. “We all need to look into the dark side of our nature – that’s where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we’re busy denying.”

— Sue Grafton

18. “Train yourself to listen to that small voice that tells us what’s important and what’s not.”

— Sue Grafton

19. “Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.”

— Sue Grafton

20. “Emotion doesn’t travel in a straight line. Like water, our feelings trickle down through cracks and crevices, seeking out the little pockets of neediness and neglect, the hairline fractures in our character usually hidden from public view.”

— Sue Grafton

21. “There’s nothing quite as irksome as someone else’s mess.”

— Sue Grafton

22. “You try to keep life simple but it never works, and in the end all you have left is yourself.”

— Sue Grafton

23. “The memory is like orbiting twin stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what’s evident forever affected by the gravity of what’s concealed.”

— Sue Grafton

24. “Writing isn’t about the destination-writing is the journey that transforms the soul and gives meaning to all else.”

— Sue Grafton

25. “I only get writer’s block about once a day.”

— Sue Grafton

26. “You can’t make anyone love you and you can’t stop anyone from dying.”

— Sue Grafton

27. “School was a source of great suffering to me, but once I learned to read, I disappeared into books, where I was a happy visitor to all the worlds that sprang full-blown from the printed page.”

— Sue Grafton

28. “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

29. “Memory is subject to a filtering process that we don’t always recognize and can’t always control. We remember what we can bear and we block what we cannot.”

— Sue Grafton

30. “I focus on the writing and let the rest of the process take care of itself. I’ve learned to trust my own instincts and I’ve also learned to take risks.”

— Sue Grafton

31. “Who knows what part we play in other people’s dreams?”

— Sue Grafton

32. “Writing is not about making a buck, not about publishers and agents. Writing is not about feeling good. Writing is about pain, suffering, hard work, risk, and fear.”

— Sue Grafton

33. “Haven’t you ever heard of compromise?” “Oh sure,” I said. “That’s when you give away half the things you want. That’s when you give the other guy half of what’s rightfully yours. I’ve done that lots of times. It sucks.”

— Sue Grafton

34. “When all else fails, cleaning house is the perfect antidote to most of life’s ills.”

— Sue Grafton

35. “The beauty of word processing, God bless my word processor, is that it keeps the plotting very fluid. The prose becomes like a liquid that you can manipulate at will. In the old days, when I typed, every piece of typing paper was like cast in concrete.”

— Sue Grafton

36. “The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same.”

— Sue Grafton

37. “You never know which people will affect your life.”

— Sue Grafton

38. “If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.”

— Sue Grafton

39. “It is a truth of human nature that we can ponder life’s mysteries for only so long before we lose interest and move on to something else.”

— Sue Grafton

40. “Smile. It gives your face something to do.”

— Sue Grafton

41. “You kill people you hate or you kill in rage or you kill to get even, but you don’t kill someone you’re indifferent to.”

— Sue Grafton

42. “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

43. “People talk about dysfunctional families; I’ve never seen any other kind.”

— Sue Grafton

44. “God save us from the people who want to do what’s best for us.”

— Sue Grafton

45. “Everything happens for a reason, but that doesn’t mean there’s a point.”

— Sue Grafton

46. “Grief rolled across the space between us like a wash of salt water.”

— Sue Grafton

47. “The critical lessons in life hold sway whether you like it or not.”

— Sue Grafton

48. “I caution writers all the time to slow down and pay more attention to the work in front of them than to the end result. I don’t think you write one book and get anywhere. I think you write five books and then maybe you are finally on the right path.”

— Sue Grafton

49. “Pay minimum wage, you get minimum work. Nobody seems to get that.”

— Sue Grafton

50. “My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise.”

— Sue Grafton