Quotes from Sue Grafton

was adept, but it had been a while since

The only cleavage I got left, I sit on," she said and then hooted at herself.

Elmore Leonard

Tragedy can turn your life around if you're open to it.

Age plays cruel tricks on the human face; all our repressed feelings become visible on the surface, where they harden like a mask.

Being fired is the pits, ranking right up there with infidelity in its brutalizing effect. The ego recoils and one's self-image is punctured like a tire by a nail. In the weeks since I'd been terminated, I'd gone through all the stages one suffers at the diagnosis of a soon-to-be-fatal disease: anger, denial, bargaining, drunkenness, foul language, head colds, rude hand gestures, anxiety, and eating disorders of sudden onset.

couldn't think when I'd last run into a man quite so inventive. My reaction to him was gut-level chemistry—like crystals of sodium flung in a swimming pool, throwing off sparks, dancing across the water like light. I had a friend once who said to me, "Wherever there is sex, we work to create a relationship that's worthy of it." I thought about that now, sensing that soon I would do that with him—start to bond, start to fantasize, start

He'd set an eight-quart pan on the stove and the water had just reached a rolling boil. On the bottom of the pan there was a crumpled section of foil. I watched him add a quarter cup of baking soda, after which he placed the silverware in the bubbling water with the foil.

I shrugged, remembering the many swats I'd endured at my Aunt Gin's hands. She always assured me she'd really give me something to cry about if I wanted to protest.

Some debts of the human soul are so enormous only life itself is sufficient forfeit. Perhaps in this case, all of the accounts are now paid in full . . . except mine.

Now and then when some dog set up a howl in the back, one or the other of the cats would appear to smile faintly.

Pam is petite, a bristly little chihuahua of a human being. She is the only woman I ever met who claims to be ten years older than she actually is so everyone will tell her how young she looks.

wrote him off the day he left and so did Ellen and

He was sitting with his feet up on the desk, his face oily-looking under the fluorescent lights. He must have been in his late thirties, but he wasn't aging well. Some combination of temper and discontent had etched lines near his mouth and spoiled the clear brown of his eyes, leaving an impression of a man beleaguered by the Fates. His

influenced, and I'd be corrupting his

Here's a tip, Self. Do not argue with a lunatic. Arguing with a lunatic simply ensures that you'll climb into his craziness with him when what you want to do is take a big step back. He

hard candies

There are moments in every investigation when my speculations about what's possible cloud and confuse any lingering sense I have of what's actually true. I wanted to check out my intuitions. The

I pictured a section of the ladies' auxiliary cookbook for Sudden Death Quick Snacks... Using ingredients one could keep on the pantry shelf in the event of tragedy.

Law and order, punishment and fair play, are all on a continuum where there are far more gray stretches than there are black and white.

What makes these cases so hard to prosecute is the victims don't want to believe they've been deceived. The victims all become dependent on the crook who's cheating them.

All Southern women have murder just under the surface, but we cloak it in graciousness.

There's only so much room at the top of the heap. The rest of us are fill dirt.

All the little birdies had flown out of this man's tree.