Quotes from Sara Gran

But now I believe the book had its own story, a story it was writing the whole time. We were only characters in it, with no more choice than characters in a novel.

Well," he said, "I'm guessing your client is either a magician or a pervert. And I mean both of those terms with the highest respect.

there was two Bibles," he said. "Or one, but it been split in half. He said half's in the book, on paper. But the other half is inside people. You born with it, but it's up to you to find out. You gotta learn to see it for yourself. That's the only way.

So the guru goes up to the hot dog guy. Hot dog guy says, 'What can I get you?' "And the guru says, 'Make me one. With everything.'

But life as herself, inhabiting her own body and mind, which had also seemed so mysterious and elusive, was nothing but another locked room. There was no way in or out. Even if you could escape, you'd be in another locked room: this fucked-up world, which you could get out of easily enough, but never get back into (as far as she knew) once you left.

Abel wanted to know all about flesh and how it responded to skin, tongue, velvet, fur, lips. His enthusiasm was contagious. I'd been a good-enough lover before, but Abel inspired my curiosity and my lust. Sex wasn't just better than I'd ever known it could be; it was more interesting. There were tools to explore, sensations to try, tastes and textures to experiment with, states of consciousness to achieve or discard.

Books are heavy and dirty and messy and have strong smells and leave your skin dry and dusty.

There are no coincidences. Just opportunities you're too dumb to see, doors you've been too blind to step through.

This was starting to be fun--strange and wealthy men barking instructions at me, and me ignoring those instructions. Not a bad hobby.

No one knows how to feel anything anymore. No one knows anymore. Ain't no one care. People have, like, experiences. Everything just another experience. They do things, but they don't feel it. It just all goes right through them. Like they a ghost. Like we all ghosts.

Like most book people, there was a shadow in his face, a hollow echo in his laugh, that let you know he'd rather be around books than people. Who could blame him? It was why so many of us were in this business. People had let us down. People had broken our hearts. We liked books and animals and messy rooms full of things that weren't people.

It was this idea that books contained secrets. Important information that would be lost if someone didn't preserve it. And then I studied history and got really into that and I realized that was true not just about sex but lots of things. If someone doesn't care about books, shit gets lost. And then I became a librarian. And archivist.

Once you had rent and food covered, all the money in the world couldn't bring you what mattered. But it sure as hell could make life without it easier.

I'd been so alone that I'd thought it was just the feeling of life when it went on too long.

I wasn't just wrong. I was wrong in such a vast and specific way that I felt like the punchline of a cruel joke.

A new car in every driveway. Every house had a little lawn out front, and every blade of grass on each lawn was trimmed down to the exact same height. Some of the ladies had flower beds and even the flowers all looked alike, something small and pink. There wasn't a person out on the streets, which made sense seeing as there were no sidewalks—the lawns came all the way out to the road. It gave me the creeps. Each

There's a demon named Kali; he loves slaughterhouses and gold. He likes to gamble and he likes to fuck things up.

But age isn't just time passing. It's time breaking you—your will, your heart, your beliefs.

To them life is like a book with blank pages. But to the detective, it is an illuminated manuscript of mysteries.

Because we'd all been handed heaven on a silver platter, and instead we'd kicked it away and asked for hell.

I had no idea what he was referring to. It could have been Vic. Or it could have been the shooting in front of the restaurant the other day. I had the thought that maybe he wanted me to forget everything—the ruin, the despair, the blood. Maybe he was part of a committee to help people remember New Orleans before and forget New Orleans now.

On any given day in court, Vic would be wearing the most expensive suit in the place. If anyone minded, they kept it to themselves. New Orleans was a little like England: people were comfortable with class distinctions.

Saturn Return is where you reconcile the parts of your life that you've chosen with the parts where you've let yourself get carried away.

You cannot follow another's footsteps to the truth," Silette wrote. "A hand can point the way. But the hand is not the teaching. The finger that points the way is not the way. The mystery is a payless land, and each detective must cut her own trail through a cruel territory.