J.A. Jance > Quotes

“A writer is someone who has written something today”
― J. A. Jance

“Beyond a certain point, that was all a mother could do for her children - Hang around long enough to drive them crazy.”
― J A Jance

“I've long maintained that women are born knowing things it takes men a whole lifetime to figure out. This was simply one more case in point.”
― J.A. Jance, Justice Denied

“Taken out of context and given a forty-degree twist, you can use the Bible to justify almost anything.”
― J.A. Jance, Until Proven Guilty

“Joanna heard the unspoken subtext in that simple statement. Jeff Daniels could call his parents and tell them the news. Marianne couldn’t. Marianne’s parents had never recovered from their daughter’s public defection from the Catholic Church and becoming a Methodist minister. Over the years, Marianne had given Joanna helpful hints about resolving the mother/ daughter rifts between Joanna and Eleanor Lathrop. That didn’t mean, however, that she had ever been able to heal the long-standing feud with her own mother.”
― J.A. Jance, Rattlesnake Crossing

“That’s what friends are for,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re old friends or new friends. They’re the kind of people who will listen as long as you need them to because, sometimes, telling the story and having someone listen is the only way to figure out how to move on.”
― J.A. Jance, Second Watch

“There’s nothing like a compliment to turn any right-thinking American male into your basic monosyllabic kind of guy.”
― J.A. Jance, Birds Of Prey

“Sunday Meat Loaf 2.5 pounds ground chuck 1 cup oats 4.5-ounce can chopped green chilies ½ cup milk ½ cup minced onion 2 eggs*  2 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons chili powder About 2 hours before serving, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake 1½ hours.”
― J.A. Jance, Field of Bones

“There’s very little distance between love and hate, and often death obliterates the distance between the two entirely. They fuse into a paralyzing turmoil of opposing emotions, one that’s almost impossible to bear.”
― J.A. Jance, Lying In Wait

“With the baby due in the next few days,” she said, toying with her paper plate loaded with peppery carne asada, “I simply can’t imagine why Butch would run off to El Paso like this. It makes no sense. It’s inexcusable.” “His publisher wanted him to go,” Joanna said patiently. “And so did I. It’s an honor to be invited to appear on a conference panel before your book is even released.” “Honor or not, it’s irresponsible for him to leave you alone like this, especially in your condition. Besides, I don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” Margaret replied. “His book is only a mystery, isn’t it? After all, it’s not as though it’s a real book.”
― J.A. Jance, Dead Wrong

“Distance is to love as wind is to fire. Blows out the little ones and fans the big ones.”
― J.A. Jance

“You expect me to get on a helicopter? I don’t do helicopters. I weigh too much, and I know too much about gravity.”
― J.A. Jance

“Like an old snakebit hound wanting his own cave under a house, I wanted to go home to lick my wounds.”
― J.A. Jance, Until Proven Guilty

“Closure isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be,”
― J.A. Jance, Second Watch

“It’s tough going to bed with a stranger. There’s nothing much to talk about the next morning when you wake up.”
― J.A. Jance, Taking The Fifth

“Suicide is something that hangs around forever, dropping load after load of guilt on the living.”
― J.A. Jance, Until Proven Guilty

“The first rule for getting out of holes is to stop”
― J.A. Jance, Second Watch

“People don’t expect you to pay attention to the little telltale clues they leave scattered around them.”
― J.A. Jance, Dismissed With Prejudice

“how easy it is to hand out advice and how hard it is to take it.”
― J.A. Jance, Payment In Kind

“She had transferred in from Baltimore because as a black single mom she wanted to raise her two young sons far from what some people liked to call the murder capital of the world.”
― J.A. Jance, Unfinished Business

“But she wasn’t okay. Not really. Over the years, and especially in the aftermath of September 11, she had found herself wondering what kind of person would walk into a burning building in the hope of saving another. Now she had met one, a real American hero. She knew she was lucky to have done so, and so was the woman in room 814.”
― J.A. Jance, Trial By Fire

“Why is it people fall for the wrong person? Then, when the inevitable happens, they spend the rest of their lives trying to get over it.”
― J.A. Jance, Breach Of Duty

“Screwed up and incomprehensible as it may seem to a rank outsider, making a movie is a lot like living life. You work with little bits and pieces without ever getting a look at the big picture. It comes together gradually, in order or out of it, with no discernible pattern.”
― J.A. Jance, A More Perfect Union

“Everybody leads you to think that hospice is this really great thing, that once you accept it, life just smooths out and everything is peachy keen. What a load of crap!”
― J.A. Jance, Queen Of The Night

“From out of her past, she could almost hear D. H. Lathrop’s New Mexican drawl telling Joanna and her mother, “Newspaper reporters are just like rattlesnakes. You’re better off keeping them out in the open where you can see what they’re doing.” Live and learn, Joanna told herself, and don’t make the same mistake twice.”
― J.A. Jance, Tombstone Courage

“In order to survive in the harsh desert climate, ocotillos spend most of the year looking parched and barren. But whenever the shallow roots are blessed with rain, short-lived leaves appear on seemingly dead branches. New crops of leaves can come and go several times in the course of a single year. Why couldn’t people be more like ocotillos? Joanna wondered, envying the hardy desert candlewood its natural resilience. Humans didn’t necessarily have that same kind of toughness, the same ability to withstand and recover from terrible dry spells.”
― J.A. Jance, Tombstone Courage

“That’s the wonderful thing about telling the truth. People believe what they want to believe. It’s a hell of a lot simpler than lying. There isn’t the ever-present danger of getting caught.”
― J.A. Jance, A More Perfect Union

“People die. Quarrels don’t.”
― J.A. Jance, Dismissed With Prejudice

“Driving time has always been my best thinking time.”
― J.A. Jance, Proof of Life

“I've had too much money to be able to tell who my friends are...”
― J.A. Jance, Until Proven Guilty