Top 160 Sue Grafton Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 4

101. “I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.”

— Sue Grafton

102. “It’s hard to keep passing myself off as a grown-up when a piece of me is still six years old and utterly at the mercy of authority.”

— Sue Grafton

103. “Death is insulting, and I resented its sudden appearance, like an unannounced visit from a boorish relative.”

— Sue Grafton

104. “Nothing wrong with being single when you can do as you please without objection or complaint. The presence of the fur ball was icing on the cake.”

— Sue Grafton

105. “I can’t stand a man who fawns, you know what I mean? I can’t stand a man sucking up to me, but he was the kind who took you right on the floor and he didn’t even look at you afterwards when he zipped up his pants.”

— Sue Grafton

106. “You know what they say about living well as the best revenge. I did well because it was the one defense I had. Escape has been the motivating force in my life. Getting away from him, getting away from her, putting that household behind me. The funny this is, I haven’t moved an inch, and the harder I run, the faster I keep slipping back to them... There are laws for everything except the harm families do.”

— Sue Grafton

107. “I have friends who adore high heels, but I can’t see the point. I figure if high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them.”

— Sue Grafton

108. “The dead are mute, but the living still have voice with which to protest their innocence. Often their objections are noisy and pious, impossible to refute since the person who could condemn them has been silenced forever.”

— Sue Grafton

109. “My notion of an elegant table is you don’t leave the knife sticking out of the mayonnaise jar.”

— Sue Grafton

110. “It’s a dangerous assumption and I know I shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but it’s always easier to pin suspicion on someone you dislike.”

— Sue Grafton

111. “You can’t go back to something once it’s dead.”

— Sue Grafton

112. “When it comes to work, it isn’t so much what we do or how much we’re paid; it’s the satisfaction we take in doing it.”

— Sue Grafton

113. “Grief is as contagious as a yawn.”

— Sue Grafton

114. “The character of Rosie is based on a woman who used to live in the same apartment building I lived in many years ago. She’s taken on a life of her own, of course.”

— Sue Grafton

115. “I think you’d best make your peace with the past since you’ve come this far. I think you know by now that you won’t go back again.”

— Sue Grafton

116. “My primary lesson, however, was that I’m a solo writer, happiest when I’m making all the executive decisions. I’ve always been willing to rise or fall on my own merits.”

— Sue Grafton

117. “As long as you have sufficient toilet paper, how far wrong can life go?”

— Sue Grafton

118. “What could smell better than supper being cooked by someone else?”

— Sue Grafton

119. “So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what’s evident forever affected by the gravity of what’s concealed.”

— Sue Grafton

120. “The struggle is what teaches you.”

— Sue Grafton

121. “So far, I felt like I had a lapful of confetti and the notion of piecing it all together to make a picture seemed very remote indeed.”

— Sue Grafton

122. “I’m an organism of the earth, a Taurus. I was never born of air, of water, or of fire. I’m a creature of gravity and I could feel the ground whisper. The same thing happens to me in old hotels when I’m staying on the twenty-second floor. I open a window and want to fling myself out.”

— Sue Grafton

123. “As it is, we could not call mine a beautiful puss, but it does the job well enough, distinguishing the front of my head from the back.”

— Sue Grafton

124. “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. 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

125. “I’ve given this a great deal of thought and what I’ve realized is that revenge doesn’t have to be an eye for an eye. Retaliation can take any number of forms. It doesn’t need to be crude or obvious. The point is, the pain should be equivalent; not tit for tat but something comparable.”

— Sue Grafton

126. “People make mistakes. People do things they never meant to do.”

— Sue Grafton

127. “Verbal clashes seldom come to a satisfying end. They peter out in weak retorts that leave you wishing you’d been as clever in the moment as you are in reviewing the conversation later.”

— Sue Grafton

128. “I’m not saying justice is for sale, but if you have enough money, you can sometimes enjoy the benefits of a short-term lease.”

— Sue Grafton

129. “You can’t make someone else do anything, even if you know you’re right.”

— Sue Grafton

130. “Results for “I looked as respectable as the bum they were booking. I fancied I smelled better, but perhaps not. I’ve noticed that most of us don’t have a clue what we smell like to other people. It’s almost as though our noses blank us out in self-defense.”

— Sue Grafton

131. “The downside of fitness, which takes years to achieve, is how quickly it vanishes – almost instantly.”

— Sue Grafton

132. “I stood when she reached the table and we did that fake kissing thing, looking like a pair of budgies about to peck each other to death.”

— Sue Grafton

133. “Growing up had made her crabby, which happens to the best of us.”

— Sue Grafton

134. “I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I’ve never stopped writing since.”

— Sue Grafton

135. “The Universe keeps track of our sins and exacts devious and repugnant punishments, like dates with unknown men.”

— Sue Grafton

136. “Kinsey was never a lawyer. She’s strictly blue collar.”

— Sue Grafton

137. “The tricky part of any lie is trying to figure out how you’d behave if you were innocent.”

— Sue Grafton

138. “Life is simple. You’re the one making things complex.”

— Sue Grafton

139. “It’s not that gray water’s boring, but the subject does have its limits.”

— Sue Grafton

140. “I figure guys are like Whitman’s Samplers. I like to take a little bite out of each and then move on before the whole box gets stale.”

— Sue Grafton

141. “I find it so liberating when other people are rude. It makes me feel mild and lazy and mean.”

— Sue Grafton

142. “Another one of life’s little jokes. I thought it was a tumor ’til it started to kick.”

— Sue Grafton

143. “He looked like an actor who’d star in some movie about a doomed love affair between an heiress and a park ranger. I thought it was probably inappropriate to fling myself against him and bury my nose in his chest.”

— Sue Grafton

144. “She held out her hand and we sat there together like grade-school kids on a field trip. “Line up in twos and no talking.” Life itself is a peculiar outing. Sometimes I still feel like I need a note from my mother.”

— Sue Grafton

145. “Too much virtue has a corrupting effect.”

— Sue Grafton

146. “Personally I don’t endorse the notion of mortality. It’s fine for other folk, but I disapprove of the concept for me and my loved ones. Seems unfair that we’re not allowed to vote on the matter and not one of us is excused. Who made up that rule?” – Kinsey Millhone.”

— Sue Grafton

147. “People always love it when you say their dogs are nice. Just shows you how out of touch they are.”

— Sue Grafton

148. “There is, apparently, some law of nature decreeing that all home construction must double in its projected cost and take four times longer than originally anticipated.”

— Sue Grafton

149. “You can believe anything you like.”

— Sue Grafton

150. “Pay enough for anything and it passes for taste.”

— Sue Grafton