Top 120 Tess Gerritsen Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Motherhood didn’t make you stronger; it made you vulnerable and afraid of what death could steal from you.”

— Tess Gerritsen

52. “When everything goes wrong in our lives, it’s natural to look around for someone -or something- to blame.”

— Tess Gerritsen

53. “Always pay attention to your dreams, her mother had taught her. They’re voices telling you what you already know, whispering advice you haven’t yet heeded.”

— Tess Gerritsen

54. “Charles threw down the knife. Its thud was lost in the high-spirited bedlam of young men let loose upon a task so gruesome, the only sane response was perverse frivolity.”

— Tess Gerritsen

55. “The bush makes you see your real place in the world,” says Johnny. “Here, you’re reminded of what you really are.” “Animals,” Elliot murmurs. Johnny nods. “Animals.”

— Tess Gerritsen

56. “Ha! Kids! You have no idea what you put your parents through, either. Wait till you have your own, you’ll see. That’s when you’ll know what it really feels like.”... “What what feels like?“... “Love,” said Angela.”

— Tess Gerritsen

57. “Only animals should have to pee in the woods.”

— Tess Gerritsen

58. “The bush is not merely a holiday destination; it’s where you learn how insignificant you truly are.”

— Tess Gerritsen

59. “Prey animals such as zebras and antelope have eyes at the sides of their heads, but a predator’s eyes face forward. Always show the cat your face. Let her see where your eyes are, and she’ll know you’re a predator, too. She’ll think twice before attacking.”

— Tess Gerritsen

60. “Catgut is a type of surgical thread made from the intestines of cows or sheep.” “So why do they call it catgut?” asked Rizzoli. “It goes back to the Middle Ages, when gut strings were used on musical instruments. The musicians referred to their instruments as their kit, and the strings were called kitgut. The word eventually became catgut.”

— Tess Gerritsen

61. “We dream our dreams, she thought, and sometimes they take us places we never anticipate.”

— Tess Gerritsen

62. “What Rizzoli thought, staring at her own image, was that she hated Elizabeth Hurley for giving women false hope. The brutal truth was, there are some women who will never be beautiful, and Rizzoli was one of them.”

— Tess Gerritsen

63. “Friendships are broken all the time. So are hearts.”

— Tess Gerritsen

64. “No man easily admits that he is afraid.”

— Tess Gerritsen

65. “Had she always been so insulated from human contact, like a bloom encased in frost?”

— Tess Gerritsen

66. “He looked at her, and she couldn’t contradict him. Nor could she offer any false reassurance. Silence, at least, was honest.”

— Tess Gerritsen

67. “Because we bear responsibility for our own actions alone. Not for anyone else’s.”

— Tess Gerritsen

68. “Maura moved quietly to the alcove. There she lit three candles for three women. One for Sister Ursula. One for Sister Camille. And one for a faceless leper whose name she would never know. She did not believe in heaven or hell; she was not even sure she believed in the eternal soul.”

— Tess Gerritsen

69. “Confirmation bias had tripped many a scientist, and no doubt many a cop as well. You find only what you’re looking for, which makes it far too easy to overlook everything else.”

— Tess Gerritsen

70. “All those mounted heads in the living room,” said Jane. “And he ends up hanging, like some dead animal. I’d say we’ve got a theme going here.”

— Tess Gerritsen

71. “An hour before her shift started, an hour before she was even supposed to be there, they rolled the first corpse through the door.”

— Tess Gerritsen

72. “This is the way modern men do battle, not with spear and sword, but with credit cards.”

— Tess Gerritsen

73. “Why do we always treat kids like the enemy?” “Because they so often behave like an alien species?”

— Tess Gerritsen

74. “That is exactly what I learned. That evil can be so ordinary.”

— Tess Gerritsen

75. “She’d loved their scent – not sweet and cloying like other flowers, but pungent. Assertive. She’d loved the way they sprang up wild in vacant lots and roadsides, reminders that true beauty is spontaneous and irrepressible.”

— Tess Gerritsen

76. “They slept because they were exhausted and weak and because most human beings can learn to endure almost anything, even the cries of the tormented. It was not that their hearts had hardened; it was because they could do nothing about it, and powerlessness leads to its own form of serenity.”

— Tess Gerritsen

77. “Could anyone truly trust a cat?”

— Tess Gerritsen

78. “But she couldn’t shake off her annoyance at her dad, at her brothers, at Father Donnelly, at every man who presumed to tell a woman what her duty was.”

— Tess Gerritsen

79. “It’s just something I’ll have to live with... The possibility of getting sick. Not knowing if I’ll live another two years or forty years. I keep telling myself, I could walk outside and get hit by a bus. That’s the way life is. Just surviving another day comes with its own risk.”

— Tess Gerritsen

80. “I’ve just confirmed every bad joke ever told about second violin players. Question: How many second violinists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: They can’t go that high. Gerda.”

— Tess Gerritsen

81. “But roses! Even through winter they persisted, bare and thorny, like angry old women crouched in the cold.”

— Tess Gerritsen

82. “Parenthood is nothing but doubts.”

— Tess Gerritsen

83. “But that doesn’t explain the apparently random killing of women and children. No, there was something else behind it, the same thing that’s inspired ritual murder cults around the world. Vast numbers of people have been sacrificed for a variety of beliefs. Whether you kill to terrify your enemies or to appease gods like Zeus or Kali, it all gets down to one thing: power.”

— Tess Gerritsen

84. “It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire’?”

— Tess Gerritsen

85. “Stay alive, stay safe is every mother’s prayer, the same prayer that runs through her own head late at night whenever her twins are out on the town. Stay alive, stay safe.”

— Tess Gerritsen

86. “Children are like fomites.” What?” “Spreading infections everywhere they go.”

— Tess Gerritsen

87. “When you cannot see where you are going, when you do not know your final destination, every hour is its own eternity.”

— Tess Gerritsen

88. “That’s what I imagined, a giant game park with comfortable lodges and roads. At a minimum, roads. According to the website, there’d be “bush camping” involved, but I pictured lovely big tents with showers and flush toilets. I didn’t think I’d be paying for the privilege of squatting in the bushes.”

— Tess Gerritsen

89. “Now they were probably telling one another: Yeah, I knew something wasn’t right. Everyone’s brilliant in retrospect.”

— Tess Gerritsen

90. “But death wouldn’t deter her killer. It would whet his appetite. He’d look at her corpse and see only an object of desire. Someone he can control. She doesn’t resist him. She is cool, passive flesh, yielding to any and all indignities. She is the perfect lover. The.”

— Tess Gerritsen

91. “Only by the shuddering of the bed did Toby realize the girl was sobbing. Molly herself made no sound; it was as though her grief was trapped in a jar, her cries inaudible to anyone but her.”

— Tess Gerritsen

92. “Nadine did a lot of listening. It was the men who seemed to do all the talking.”

— Tess Gerritsen

93. “Based on the timing, the circumstances. In July 1970, William Maitland vanished from the face of the earth. In August of the same year, we heard the first reports of a foreign pilot flying for the enemy. Running weapons and gold.”

— Tess Gerritsen

94. “She remembered a poster of “The Visible Woman” hanging in her high school health class, revealing the organs in their anatomical positions. Ugly or beautiful, every woman is merely a package of organs.”

— Tess Gerritsen

95. “Laura would never be so easily intimidated. She was braver than he could ever be, brave enough to wave her ugly scars like scarlet flags.”

— Tess Gerritsen

96. “There are far scarier things in this world than dead bodies.”

— Tess Gerritsen

97. “What happens when we get old? he wondered. Where does the kid part of us go?”

— Tess Gerritsen

98. “There’s nothing as boring as perfection.”

— Tess Gerritsen

99. “My childhood was spent in my local library in a San Diego suburb. It’s where I became a writer – by 1st becoming a reader!”

— Tess Gerritsen

100. “Sometimes, she thought, you’ve got to accept a helping hand. Sometimes you’ve got to admit you can’t do it all by yourself.”

— Tess Gerritsen