Quotes from Sue Grafton

Memory is subject to a filtering process that we don't always recognize and can't always control. We remember what we can bear and we block what we cannot.

About every six to eight months, I run into a man who astounds me sexually, but between escapades, I'm celibate, which I don't think is any big deal. After two unsuccessful marriages, I find myself keeping my guard up, along with my underpants.

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.

These are the days that require discipline, when exercise is pure duty and the good feeling only comes later, consisting solely of self-congratulations for having done the job at all.

If love is what injures us, how can we heal?

Whatever the surface appearances, most human beings come equipped with convoluted emotional machinery. With intimacy, the wreckage starts to show, damage rendered in the course of passions colliding like freight trains on the same track.

Too much virtue has a corrupting effect.

I wish life could be edited as deftly as prose. It would be nice to go back and write a better story, correcting weaknesses and follies in the light of what I now know. What I've noticed though is that any attempt to trim out the dark matter takes away some of the good that was also buried in the muck. The past is a package deal and I don't believe there's a way to tell some of the truth without telling most.Wisdom comes at a price, and I have paid dearly for mine.

Life was reduced to its four basic elements: air, food, drink, and a good friend.

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.

Pain was better than anxiety any day of the week and sweat was better than depression.

Built into bad news is that sense of profound disbelief. The mind struggles to absorb the bare facts, defending itself against the larger implications.

You don't have to justify yourself to me. You did what you did.

You kill people you hate or you kill in rage or you kill to get even, but you don't kill someone you're indifferent to.

People can hold out just so long and then they fold.

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.

You can't make someone else do anything, even if you know you're right.

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.

I did discover that if you're interested in low wages, a bookstore ranks below retail clothing sales, except the hours are worse.

I've never been a big fan of exercise. I just can't think of any other way to feel good. Kinsey Milhone

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.

Being rule governed, I operate in a world filled with imaginary restraints.

He has all the uncanny intuitions of a psychopath. Have you ever dealt with one? It's almost like a form of mind-reading...

While I'm not a big fan of nature, its intractability amuses me to no end. (Kinsey Millhone)