Sue Henry > Quotes

“There is nothing you can imagine that is quite as soulful as the eyes of a mini-dachshund staring up at the popcorn bowl to inspire an unendurable case of guilt.”
― Sue Henry, The Serpents Trail

“Though weeks, even months, have at times gone by without contact, when we were separated by distance and occupied with busy lives and raising families, the thread of connection had continued true and deep, allowing us to pick up where we left off, as if there had been no time lost. Time had never been a part of the equation.”
― Sue Henry, The Serpents Trail

“Things happen and you change directions,”
― Sue Henry, The Tooth of Time

“Wanting her physically was easy. It was the emotional part that gave him the shakes. He no longer found comfort in the false intimacy of casual one-night stands. They left him feeling hollow. You could talk yourself into just about anything, but emotionally you were never fooled. Mornings after were haunted by an emotional hangover for which there was no quick hair-of-the-dog chaser.”
― Sue Henry, Murder on the Iditarod Trail

“I think you better take this,” she said, her eyes wide. “There's been another accident. In Happy Valley.”
― Sue Henry, Murder on the Iditarod Trail

“The snow machine drivers, dressed in layers of outer. wear to repel the worst the Arctic can deliver, may cover the full thousand miles without a good night’s sleep and with few hot meals. A bed becomes something they dreamed of once; a hot shower, only a memory. They develop shoulders the envy of linebackers. But when they try to explain the pale, empty nights on the ice of Norton Sound, or the northern lights so bright they reflect off the snow in the Farewell Burn, wistful looks come over their wind and sunburned faces and they drift into silence or stammering attempts at description. Many come back year after year, addicted to the trail.”
― Sue Henry, Murder on the Iditarod Trail

“turn, it slid solidly into the tree, mashing a stanchion”
― Sue Henry, Murder on the Iditarod Trail: An Alaskan Mystery

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have now entered Holkham Bay, named by Captain George Vancouver in 1794. It has two branches, Tracy Arm to the north, and Endicott Arm to the south. “We are heading first into Tracy Arm, which was named by Lieutenant Commander Mansfield of the U.S. Navy, for Benjamin Franklin Tracy, Secretary of the Navy from 1889 to 1893. Mansfield, commander of the survey vessel, Patterson, in Alaska from 1889 to 1913, also named Sawyer Glacier, which you will see at the head of this arm, and which calves the hundreds of icebergs you will see floating in the waters of the arm. This passage was carved centuries ago during an ice age by a massive glacier which completely filled the channel. You can see the signs of its passing in the scoring of the bare rock walls. Avalanche chutes further scar the walls each spring and, as you can already see ahead of us, these are occupied by spectacular waterfalls. We will shortly stop near one of these so you can view it close up and feel how cold the water is coming directly off an unseen glacier at the top. “After visiting Sawyer Glacier, we will go back and turn up Endicott Arm, named for William Endicott, a member of the Massachusetts legislature and the U.S. Senate, to see Dawes Glacier. He was secretary of war from 1885 to 1891. Part way up Endicott Arm we will come to Ford’s Terror, a branch of Endicott Arm which has very strong tidal currents.”
― Sue Henry, Death Takes Passage

“I told you this is my fifth Iditarod. I don’t think you understand what that means. It means I’ve been breeding dogs, raising them, working with them all these years to prepare for this race. Every race is this race. As soon as | got home from my first race I started putting together the best team I could train. Every year I do that.

“I’ve bought dogs, traded them, tried them out, found out what kind of pups turn into good racers, sold and gotten rid of as many as I kept. With a lot of hard work, I’ve built a racing machine. I know which dogs will go in any kind of cold, which run best in the wind, and which can take the weather without dehydrating. We understand each other. Tank knows, almost before I do, what I want and what to do about it. He’s a great leader. And the rest know me, trust me and what I ask them to do. They love it, the running, as much as I| do. I Jove it, Alex, or I wouldn’t do it.”
― Sue Henry, Murder on the Iditarod Trail

“Does love always have to be the way you want it, or measured by some personal standard to count? People only have their own kind to give. I think that every bit of what she felt for you she gave as well as she could.”
― Sue Henry, The Serpents Trail

“If in doubt, leave it out is a rule I have followed most of my life and usually find advisable in the long run. You can’t unsay something. It works better to keep it to yourself until you’re sure, than to regret saying it later.”
― Sue Henry, The Serpents Trail

“Even graying and bearing the documentation of our years in form and face, somewhere inside we are all twenty years old,”
― Sue Henry, The Serpents Trail

“Murder is what’s going on. I can’t say it plainer. Someone is killing mushers. We don’t know why, or who. But we will. I just don’t want any more of you to die. If we stop the race now, the deaths will probably stop too. You had all better think about that carefully.”
― Sue Henry, Murder on the Iditarod Trail

“and gotten them back on the trail. They would continue to dry out on the run. He had also replaced his heavy insulated mittens. They were a soggy mess, frozen stiff, and would have to”
― Sue Henry, Murder on the Iditarod Trail: An Alaskan Mystery

“His headlamp shattered as it hit. So did his nose and cheek. A wicked, foot-long limb projected from the side of the trunk. Cold and sharp, it entered his closed right eye and pushed through his brain until it hit the back of his skull. There it stopped. His body hung against the trunk of the spruce until his weight broke the limb and he fell slowly onto the trail.”
― Sue Henry, Murder on the Iditarod Trail