Martha Grimes > Quotes

“Before you hate something you should try to understand it.”
― Martha Grimes, Dakota

“An idyllic childhood is probably illusion.”
― Martha Grimes, The Lamorna Wink

“Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want.”
― Martha Grimes, Dust

“We don't know who we are until we see what we can do.”
― Martha Grimes

“Melrose was so concerned that the [book]shop might close for lack of business, that he had suggested he would like to invest in it or even become a silent partner. "You see, books have always been a hobby of mine." Books had never been a hobby; they were a necessity.”
― Martha Grimes, Vertigo 42

“And so it continued all day, wynde after wynde, from a room beyond came the whistle of a teakettle. "Now, you really must join me. I've some marvelous Darjeeling, and some delicious petits fours a friend of mine gave me for Christmas.”
― Martha Grimes, The Man With a Load of Mischief

“Elf made his way fuzzily back to the drawer, trying to think nasty thoughts about his tormentor (Mungo the dog) but he couldn't, as he was too little and his mind was formless and without messages.
( "Elf" the tiny kitten Mungo tormented )”
― Martha Grimes, The Black Cat

“Losing one's mind is surely like losing one's virginity. Lose a little, lose a lot.”
― Martha Grimes, The Old Fox Deceiv'd

“Old willows trailed veils of wet leaves across his path. Moss crawled up the headstones. The place was otherwise deserted.”
― Martha Grimes, Jerusalem Inn

“If a cone had dropped on velvet needles, if a star had lain a silver track across the sky, if the dead had turned in their graves - I swear, I would have heard it, that's how silent it all was. ”
― Martha Grimes

“I read somewhere that we never completely forget a thing, that there are the imprints of everything we’ve ever seen or done, all of these tiny details at the bottoms of our minds, like pebbles and weeds that never surface from a river bottom.”
― Martha Grimes, Cold Flat Junction

“Polly was a writer of many deadlines. There were the ignorable deadlines, the not-to-be-taken-too-seriously deadlines: the deadlines-before-the-deadlines deadlines, and finally, the no-kidding-around deadlines. She set these various dates, she'd told him, to fool herself.”
― Martha Grimes, Rainbow's End

“As he followed Wood, Jury thought: one disappearance, two auto accident victims, one in a mental institution, one drowned. One murdered. Rackmoor, for all its bracing sea air, didn’t seem the healthiest place in the British Isles.”
― Martha Grimes, The Old Fox Deceiv'd

“Nellie does for Dick Scroggs now and then, and no better than she should be —”
― Martha Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief

“Before Ernest could start walking back the cat, Melrose put in, “But isn’t it rather we who have come here, Mrs. Attaboy?” At her uncomprehending look, he plowed on. “It is their country.” “What? Africa?” “If Africa were a country, the answer would be yes.”
― Martha Grimes, The Knowledge

“a cuppa being the true Englishman’s cure for everything,”
― Martha Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief

“tweed”
― Martha Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief

“Perhaps he was fit for the life of a hermit. Give up all of his worldly possessions and go live in a hut on a shelf of rock and watch the sunrise every morning. Up before the sun! What a dreadful idea; he shuddered.”
― Martha Grimes, The Lamorna Wink

“They stood now in the low, dimly lit hall, hung about with sporting prints and stuffed birds, his aunt and Simon Matchett making small talk smaller.”
― Martha Grimes, The Man with a Load of Mischief

“Tom says to Richard: You asked what I missed about the job. And that's it. But his tone had changed. The vanished fame, the lost acclaim, the old success.”
― Martha Grimes, The Old Success

“It was either Kenya or staying with my nincompoop grandchildren. Ha! Leopards I’d sooner.”

Melrose waited for her to complete the sentence, but she was done with it.”
― Martha Grimes, The Knowledge

“Jury paused. “This is a onetime offer. It won’t come again. Choose.” Melrose prepared to laugh like hell, but managed only a bark. “Onetime offer? You mean if I don’t take you up on either of these jobs here and now, you’l I never ask me again?” “That is correct.” “Is this the most ridiculous conversation we’ve ever had?” “No, we’ve had more ridiculous.”
― Martha Grimes, The Knowledge

“Whether we fall by ambition, blood or lust, Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
― Martha Grimes, Jerusalem Inn

“It was the sort of room that made you want to stand around in it and read for the rest of your life”
― Martha Grimes, Jerusalem Inn

“He felt the loss of something irreplacable, as if a thief had come out of the night, velvet-gloved and softly shod, and taken whatever it was away without Jury’s ever having known, and slipped through the square,”
― Martha Grimes, Jerusalem Inn

“What does the absolutely final deadline apply to? What book?"
If there was one book that did not cry out for a sequel, it was "Death of a Doge". "Don't you remember what an awful time you had writing that book?”
― Martha Grimes

“Yes, but that’s what grief often does: turns something impossible into something possible. Turns something unpreventable into the preventable.”
― Martha Grimes, The Old Success

“Find her a good home, someone to take care of her. She’s a little girl, Melrose. She shouldn’t be spending her days at Heathrow, scanning for villains. She should be safe.”

The other members who were awake turned wide-eyed stares at Melrose, who was laughing so hard he was doubled up in his chair.

“Just what the hell is so funny?”

“Take care of her. This is Patty Haigh you’re talking about. The same Patty Haigh who got through Heathrow security on a pinched boarding pass; who wangled her way into B.B.’s good graces and flew to Dubai; who outwitted police in London, Dubai and Nairobi; who carries in her backpack a full selection of costumes and wigs to meet any eventuality; who requisitioned strangers to be her aunts, uncles, parents; who roamed around that godless slum, Kibera, on her own; who got into the Hemingways Hotel without paying a penny; who crossed the dark veldt between Kibera and Mbosi Camp protected only by her wits. This is the person we should keep safe!”
― Martha Grimes, The Knowledge

“Society readily accepts that a father can’t be expected to raise a child alone, without help; yet a mother is completely different. For a mother to claim she couldn’t do it, well, that’s unacceptable.”
― Martha Grimes, The Knowledge

“They’re an idea of home, I think. Words are. It really is like opening a door, isn’t it, to open a book. If that’s not too sentimental to say. Books, words, stories are a kind of solace.”
― Martha Grimes, Cold Flat Junction