Elizabeth George > Quotes

“There are no easy answers, there's only living through the questions.”
― Elizabeth George, Missing Joseph

“He had never thought of himself as much of a praying man, but as he sat in the car in the growing darkness and the minutes passed, he knew what it was to pray. It was to will goodness out of evil, hope out of despair, life out of death. It was to will dreams into existence and spectres into reality. It was to will an end to anguish and a beginning to joy.”
― Elizabeth George, A Great Deliverance

“Of all my children, you were always the hardest on yourself. You were always looking for the right way to behave, so concerned you might make a mistake. But, darling, there are no mistakes. There are only our wishes, our actions, and the consequences that follow both. There are only events, how we cope with them, and what we learn from the coping."

"That's too easy," he said.

"On the contrary. It's monumentally difficult.”
― Elizabeth George, With No One as Witness

“Everything in our lives," she said quietly, "leads to everything else in our lives. So a moment in the present has a reference point, both in the past and in the future. I want you to know that you--as you are right now and as you ever will be--are fully enough for this moment . . . ”
― Elizabeth George, With No One as Witness

“She thought about how it was so simple with animals. They gave their hearts without question or fear. They had no expectations. They were so easy to love. If people could only be like that, no one would ever be hurt, she thought. No one would ever need to learn how to forgive.”
― Elizabeth George, A Suitable Vengeance

“Barbara wanted to go to tea at Dorchester as much as she wanted to give birth to octuplets.”
― Elizabeth George, Believing the Lie

“Should I anticipate all future conversations with you to take this bent?" Lynley enquired. "Frankly, I've always thought your appeal lay in your complete indifference to personal grooming."

"Those days are past, sir. What c'n I do for you? I reckon this isn't a personal call, made to see if I'm keeping my legs shaved.”
― Elizabeth George, Believing the Lie

“One did not alter lives and simply walk away from the damage.”
― Elizabeth George, With No One as Witness

“I've always found that a rather unfortunate quirk in our species. Everyone pants towards orgasm without pausing to realise that its merely a biological trap designed for the purpose of reproduction. What utter nonsense.”
― Elizabeth George

“Becca took the opportunity to say good-bye to Derric by touching his hand. The heart monitor raced suddenly. She looked from it to Rhonda.
Rhonda’s expression said what her voice did not. Who are you really and why is my son reacting to the touch of your hand?”
― Elizabeth George, The Edge of Nowhere

“As they headed across the hospital lobby, undersheriff Mathieson came in the door at a run. Seth thought about hiding. He thought about stuffing Becca next to an artificial plant with large dusty leaves.”
― Elizabeth George, The Edge of Nowhere

“At the end of the day, no one gets away with anything, I've found.”
― Elizabeth George, Believing the Lie

“But if you don't understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.”
― Elizabeth George

“Grand, there’s one other thing.”
“What’s that, Seth?”
“You always call me ‘favorite male grandchild,’ and I like that. I do. But fact is, I’m your only male grandchild.”
Ralph looked at him, blue eyes sparkling. He smiled. Then he laughed out loud. “Details,” he said. “Mere details, Seth.”
― Elizabeth George

“My kids' lives aren't about what I want. My kids' lives are about making their own decisions and getting the consequences and coping with those.”
― Elizabeth George, The Punishment She Deserves

“That's all life is, isn't it? Just continuing, going on.”
― Elizabeth George, Believing the Lie

“People, give up on all sorts of things, Havers. But they rarely if ever give up on love.”
― Elizabeth George, Well-Schooled in Murder

“...raucous heavy metal of punk guitars screeching like robots put to the rack...”
― Elizabeth George, In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

“He managed to make his request with the minimum of time given to speculating what she looked like naked, forgiving himself for the instant of fantasy by telling himself it was the curse of being male. In the presence of a beautiful woman, he had always experienced that knee-jerk reaction to being reduced - if only momentarily - to skin, bone, and testosterone.”
― Elizabeth George

“He pulled to the side and saw, to his chagrin, that Mrs. Prince of the $2,100 bill at the Star Store was just leaving. She waved at him merrily and grinned and Seth waved back gamely. He wondered how Ralph had reacted to the news that his grandson had managed to screw up running the Star Store’s cash register. He could easily imagine Mrs. Prince’s words: “Ralph, I hate to ask, but can that boy even count?”
― Elizabeth George, The Edge of Nowhere

“You don’t know this yet, darling, because you haven’t experienced that moment when the twisting squeezing crush of your muscles and the urge to expel and to scream at once results in this small mass of humanity that squalls and breathes and comes to rest against your stomach, naked to your nakedness, dependent upon you, blind at that moment, hands instinctively trying to clutch. And once you close those fingers round one of your own…no, not even then…once you look at this life that you’ve created, you know you’ll do anything, suffer anything, to protect it. Mostly for its own sake you protect, of course, because all it is really is living, breathing need. But partly you protect it for your own.”
― Elizabeth George, Missing Joseph

“The people in makeup would buff away the shine on the face of anyone in front of the camera, and the sound blokes would clip a microphone onto the lapel of a jacket so it looked like something other than an insect about to crawl onto the presenter’s chin, but Steven Spielberg this group was not. This was a low-budget operation, thank you very much.”
― Elizabeth George, With No One as Witness

“She'd liked things better when everything had been controlled simply by on and off switches and when push-button telephone and telly remotes were as far as technology had gone. Make a few calls and put the burden of information searching on someone else. That was the ticket. Now, however, things were different. It was the investigator's mental shoe leather that got worn down, not the real thing.”
― Elizabeth George

“He was shaking so badly, we could have used him to make martinis for James Bond.”
― Elizabeth George, Deception on His Mind

“took a moment to adjust”
― Elizabeth George, In the Presence of the Enemy

“The countryside was a thousand different shades of green, from the patchwork quilts of the cultivated land to the desolation of the open moors. The road dipped through dales where forests protected spotless villages and then climbed switchbacked curves to take them again up to the open land where the North Sea wind blew unforgivingly across heather and furze. Here, the only life belonged to the sheep. They wandered free and unfenced, unfettered by the ancient dry stone walls that constructed boundaries for their fellows in the dales below. There were contradictions everywhere. In the cultivated areas, life burgeoned from every cranny and hedgerow, a thick vegetation that in another season would produce the mixed beauties of cow parsley, campion, vetch, and foxglove. It was an area where transportation was delayed while two dogs expertly herded a flock of plump sheep across pasture, down hillside, and along the road for a two-mile stroll into the centre of a village,”
― Elizabeth George, A Great Deliverance

“What I mean is that one's whole life is an autobiography, don't you agree? Whether it gets written or not doesn't make a difference. What goes into it, though? That's what counts.”
― Elizabeth George, A Banquet of Consequences

“nothing but make her own discomfort worse. Kendra developed a deeper loathing for the woman, especially for her accent. Fabia’s well-modulated tone screamed upper-middle class. Her choice of vocabulary said university graduate. Her ease of manner declared that she’d had a life of privilege. To Kendra, all of this added up to someone who could neither understand what she was dealing with nor begin to negotiate a way through”
― Elizabeth George, What Came Before He Shot Her

“the big lesson about loving someone was coming to understand that when love ended for one person, it ended for both people.”
― Elizabeth George, The Edge of Nowhere

“Hungry”, she said, “That’s what it’s like. Inside of me, always. This ... hunger that nothing is able to assuage. It’s horrible. It’s why I always feel ... well, empty. I know I can’t keep living this way, but I don’t know how to make the hunger stop.”

“Perhaps you’re not meant to”, he said, “Perhaps you’re meant to cope with it. Either that or to come to realize that the hunger and the appeasement are two entirely different things. They’re unrelated. One will never quell the other.”

She thought about this. She considered how much of herself – and the way she’d lived so long – had been tied up with a single unfulfilled desire. She finally said, “This is not who I want to be.”

“Then be someone else.”

Deborah/Lynley”
― Elizabeth George