Quotes from Jane Haddam

People always seemed to know half of history, and to get it confused with the other half.

I'd like to write a history, maybe of the Reformation.

I've been a teacher at the college level, in composition mostly, and I've been an editor on magazines.

In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.

it always made him feel better, and calmer, and more sane, to hold a book. He had never been able to understand people who did not read. He had never been able to understand how they held on to themselves.

Her mother was fine. Her mother was always fine. Fine was her way of saying she didn't exist.

Halfway across town, Father Tibor Kasparian lay on the long hard cement cot that was what this jail cell had for a bed and wished he had a book. It could be any book. He didn't really think he could read right now, but it always made him feel better, and calmer, and more sane, to hold a book. He had never been able to understand people who did not read. He had never been able to understand how they held on to themselves.

it was part of being very young that you overestimated the lightweights with charisma.

There is no creation without destruction. There is no light without dark. That's what my nuns didn't understand. It isn't a competition. Good and evil are all part of the same thing.

if the people who called themselves Christians behaved like Christians, there wouldn't be any people sleeping in the street.

had shocked him into speechlessness to realize that down-and-outs in New Jersey expected to have more in the way of amenities than coal miners and sharecroppers in most of West Virginia, and that people in the North believed that there was no one, anywhere, who still had to go out in the cold in the middle of the winter to use a chemical latrine.

You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters insteresting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.

I don't make my own schedule - it's constructed around my sons' school schedules.

Knowledge pursued for its own sake - that's the definition of education, as opposed to training.

Listen to advice. You don't know how many writer's conferences I've taught at where at least half the audience fights all the conventions of the field.

I tend to come up with people more than situations - most of my books start with a character.

Nobody in real life ever takes me seriously.

I've been a teacher at the college level, in composition mostly, and I've been an editor on magazines.

The Internet makes it possible for people like me to live the way I do now. Without it, I'd have to be in New York or some other city. I think the Internet is the greatest invention in history after antibiotics.

Everybody is a True Believer. Everybody has a little nugget they're convinced of that is the opposite of the nugget on the other side. And they're convinced it's fact.

I really hate those books where the murderer turns out to be somebody you never heard of who pops up in the last chapter.

I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years.

My husband used to take care of the business part of this, and after he died I found I wasn't really any good at it. I hate remembering who owes me what and bugging them if they haven't paid me.

In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.