Top 124 Quotes & Sayings by Sue Grafton

Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.

I attended the University of Louisville my freshman year, transferred to what was then Western Kentucky State Teachers College for my sophomore and junior years, and then graduated from the University of Louisville in the summer of 1961.

At that point, I sat down and made an alphabetical list of all the crime related words I could think of. So here I am now, nearly half-way through, probably tied up until the year 2015 or SO.

Kinsey was never a lawyer. She's strictly blue collar.

Of the first seven novels I wrote, numbers four and five were published. Numbers one, two, three, six, and seven, have never seen the light of day... and rightly so.

I focus on the writing and let the rest of the process take care of itself. I've learned to trust my own instincts and I've also learned to take risks.

Henry is entirely invented though by now I feel he's as real as anyone I know.

I was an English major in college with minors in Fine Arts and Humanities.

Books are like movies of the mind and it's better to leave Kinsey where she is.

We all need to look into the dark side of our nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying.

The character of Rosie is based on a woman who used to live in the same apartment building I lived in many years ago. She's taken on a life of her own, of course.

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.

My primary lesson, however, was that I'm a solo writer, happiest when I'm making all the executive decisions. I've always been willing to rise or fall on my own merits.

I don't want to write formula. I don't want to crank these books out like sausages. Every book is different, which takes a hell of a lot of ingenuity on my part.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

I've never written about my husband, Steve, or any of my children because I know them all too well. I see them in all their complexities which makes them impossible to render on the printed page.

After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with.

If high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them.

The truth is, I could no more dictate her nature than she could dictate mine. Kinsey's happy as she is and she doesn't need to be rescued, improved, or saved.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

I'm not sure Kinsey has changed in these first twelve books. I think the reader learns more about her, but from Kinsey's perspective, only three years have passed while the rest of us have been getting older at a much faster clip.

I write because it's all I know how to do. Writing is my anchor and my purpose. My life is informed by writing, whether the work is going well or I'm stuck in the hell of writer's block, which I'm happy to report only occurs about once a day.

In my opinion, there's no condition in life that can't be ameliorated by a dose of junk food.

Pretending to be 'normal' is a lot harder than you think.

The Jungian therapist taught me the difference between the ego and the shadow. I realized I'd been so busy being a good girl that I'd completely detached from my shadow. It's something we all have, and it's where all the creative juices are.

Some people can't see the color red. That doesn't mean it isn't there.

You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.

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.

Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.

Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right - a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates.

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.

Pay enough for anything and it passes for taste.

If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.

Writing is self-taught. Consulting other people only teaches you to depend on their reactions, which may or may not be legitimate. Quit looking for approval ... Learn to evaluate your own work with a dispassionate eye ... the lessons you acquire will be all the more valuable because you've mastered your craft from within.

If you're unhappy, change something.

My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.

People who've had happy childhoods are wonderful, but they're bland... An unhappy childhood compels you to use your imagination to create a world in which you can be happy. Use your old grief. That's the gift you're given.

If your mind isn't open, keep your mouth shut too.

Happiness is seasonal, like anything else

When all else fails, cleaning house is the perfect antidote to most of life's ills.

I've never known anyone yet who doesn't suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around... We're all eight years old again and anything is possible.

Writing is a process and you must trust the process! Fear and anxiety are part of that process along with the enthusaism and the good days and the joy and the passion and the great hopes you have for a book. But when you run into problems, when you get stuck or scared, you must trust that that is part of how a book comes to pass, and what you need to do is get very still and quiet because Self will tell you how to get out of a hole you've dug for yourself.

I hate nature. I really do. Nature is composed entirely of sticks, dirt, fall-down places, biting and stinging things, and savageries too numerous to list. And I'm not the only one who feels this way. Man has been building cities since the year oughty-ought, just to get away from this stuff.

I love being single. It's almost like being rich.

The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same.

No one with a happy childhood ever amounts to much in this world. They are so well adjusted, they never are driven to achieve anything.

Too much virtue has a corrupting effect.

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They're just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.

Who knows what part we play in other people's dreams?

Pay minimum wage, you get minimum work. Nobody seems to get that.

God save us from the people who want to do what's best for us.

Dream big but think small.

My job as the writer is to fool you. Your job as the reader is to see if you can catch me at it.

Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between being cautious and being dead.

You never know which people will affect your life.

I know there are people who believe you should forgive and forget. For the record, I'd like to say I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I'm given the opportunity to get even first.

Train yourself to listen to that small voice that tells us what's important and what's not.

The struggle is what teaches you.

A woman should never, never, never be financially dependent to anyone, especially a man, because the minute you were dependent, you could be abused.