Quotes from Marcia Muller

I actually feel, when I get to about page 200, that it's going to be a book after all! It never gets easier - when you conquer one problem, another one rises up to take its place.

As I sat in a small room constructing what seemed to me awkward sentences and paragraphs, McCone was out having exciting adventures.

She was the archetypal selfless mother: living only for her children, sheltering them from the consequences of their actions - and in the end doing them irreparable harm.

We writers of series fiction tend to idealize ourselves in our characters, giving them attributes we wish we possessed and ever more interesting lives.

We have a cottage on the Mendocino coast.

Women in mystery fiction were largely confined to little old lady snoops - amateur sleuths - who are nurses, teachers, whatever.

It's very hard to get one publisher to accept an author going over to the other author's company to collaborate.

Through the misguided notion that writing about flying was easy, I had McCone become a pilot. When I learned that research in books wasn't enough, I forced myself to take lessons.

Anna Katherine Green wrote about a female inquiry agent, and there were a scattering of female investigators in the 1970s, authored by men, who just didn't ring true. So I thought, 'Well, there's an opening here for something.'

I was never a good journalist, because I would make things up. A lot of people frowned on that, which is why I ended up in fiction.

The human animal only sees what it wants to see.

About 10 years ago, in an effort to gain a better grasp on McCone's world, I took up the hobby of building fully electrified scale models: first of the legal cooperative where she started out, and then of her own brown-shingled cottage, a pursuit that the more tactful of my friends label unusual, and that the more blunt refer to as obsessive.

The 1890s was a decade when life began to change in urban America. Modern conveniences that we now take for granted came into use; women's roles became less restrictive; and San Francisco, a port city with influences from all over the world, was a lively place in which to reside.

I don't walk the mean streets.

every death diminishes us, but those that leave differences unresolved and things unsaid are the most painful of all.

Ever think of becoming a cop?" "I did, but at the time there wasn't much opportunity for women. Lady cops were confined to typing, taking shorthand, and the juvenile division." "And I don't suppose you have any womanly skills like typing or taking shorthand?" I smiled. "No, but I'm a mean shot with a .38 and I bake terrific bread.

I hope you'll excuse the mess." David Halpert looked dismayed at the chaos in his living room -- not so much for my sake, but because it was his and he had to live with it.

You believe. You just don't put a name to it.

The human animal only sees what it wants to see.

It's strange, you know. You can be friendly with people year after year, fish with them on the weekends, attend parties and cookouts, and then one day the reason you're drawn together is gone—and they're gone too. It's strange—and sad.

something, Mister Shock?