Writing is not about making a buck, not about publishers and agents. Writing is not about feeling good. Writing is about pain, suffering, hard work, risk, and fear.
Sue GraftonRead
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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the dark reality that those close to us can be capable of extreme violence, including murder.
Sue Grafton's quote delves into the unsettling idea that the most trusted and loved individuals in our lives could harbor violent tendencies. It highlights the irony and discomfort of intimacy, suggesting that the people we share our lives with are often the ones who can pose the greatest danger, provoking a chilling sense of vulnerability during everyday moments like family dinners.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the nature of crime in society.
Writing is not about making a buck, not about publishers and agents. Writing is not about feeling good. Writing is about pain, suffering, hard work, risk, and fear.
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.
There are days when none of us can bear it, but the good comes around again. Happiness is seasonal, like anything else. Wait it out. There are people who love you. People who can help.
So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.
Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.
A woman should never, never, never be financially dependent to anyone, especially a man, because the minute you were dependent, you could be abused.
Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
Good marriages are built upon a combination of emotional love and a common commitment to a core of beliefs about what is important in life and what we wish to do with our lives. Speaking each other's primary love language creates the emotional climate where these beliefs can be fleshed out in daily life.
To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you make. It has very little thing to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
Our world is increasingly interdependent, but I wonder if we truly understand that our interdependent human community has to be compassionate; compassionate in our choice of goals, compassionate in our means of cooperation and our pursuit of these goals.
As social animals we humans are very sensitive to our rank and position within any group. We can measure our status by the attention and respect we receive.
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