Martha Grimes Quotes

“Before you hate something you should try to understand it.”

— Martha Grimes

“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

“An idyllic childhood is probably illusion.”

— Martha Grimes

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

— Martha Grimes

“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

“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

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

Old willows trailed veils of wet leaves across his path. Moss crawled up the headstones. The place was otherwise deserted.

— Martha Grimes

“Losing one's mind is surely like losing one's virginity. Lose a little, lose a lot.”

— Martha Grimes

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

“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

“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

“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

“Writing a mystery is more difficult than other kinds of books because a mystery has a certain framework that must be superimposed over the story.”

— Martha Grimes

I do Q&As, not readings.

— Martha Grimes

“I don't have to hang around a pub, really, to get an idea. I usually visit it once, get the layout, the atmosphere, the feel of it.”

— Martha Grimes

“I have readers tell me that I must be bored, but that's not true. I am never bored with the characters. I like them.”

— Martha Grimes

“I love stories. I just enjoy telling stories and watching what these characters do - although writing continues to be just as hard as it always was.”

— Martha Grimes

“I'm constantly battling writer's block; it usually takes me two hours to write anything.”

— Martha Grimes

My black cat was named Blackie.

— Martha Grimes

“The England I write about doesn't strike me as the real one.”

— Martha Grimes

“When you write the first book of a series, you do have to be careful what you put in because then you are stuck with it.”

— Martha Grimes

I do read P.D. James because she pays much more attention to character, to a particular atmosphere or setting. But most mystery writers, I think, are controlled by the plot.

— Martha Grimes

“I don't think I could have just kept writing the 'Richard Jury' books. It wasn't that I was bored or dissatisfied. I just had to write something else.”

— Martha Grimes

“I'll see something or hear something. Sometimes, it can be a color. Or a piece of music. Or an image of some kind. I see something, and it has huge emotional weight, although I have no idea why.”

— Martha Grimes

“In Baltimore, I was walking with a friend who was playing at a pub he kept referring to as the Horse. But when I saw the sign 'The Horse You Came In On' - I thought, 'My God.' I had no intention of ever setting a Jury novel in the U.S., but when I saw that, I thought, 'That's it.' The names are very important.”

— Martha Grimes

“There are people who read Tolstoy or Dostoevski who do not insist that their endings be happy or pleasant or, at least, not be depressing. But if you're writing mysteries - oh, no, you can't have an ending like that. It must be tidy.”

— Martha Grimes

“Silence is a way of saying: we do not have to entertain each other; we are okay as we are.”

— Martha Grimes

“Children can ask what adults don't dare to because we don't want to admit we're scared and we don't really want to hear the answers.”

— Martha Grimes

“You can never do enough for the dead. You search around for comfort but there is no comfort; there never was and never will be. There is only a gradual wearing away of the sharp edges, so that you don't feel ambushed at every turn, as if you saw the dead suddenly rounding the corner.”

— Martha Grimes

“Writers just kept on staring at nothing until they wrote something. Might be two minutes or two weeks.”

— Martha Grimes

Writing is an antisocial act.

— Martha Grimes

“You can't be blocked if you just keep on writing words. Any words. People who get 'blocked' make the mistake of thinking they have to write good words.”

— Martha Grimes

“Intricately plotted, beautifully paced, The Music of the Spheres is an elegant historical novel rich in detail, at times Dickensian in its description of London. Elizabeth Redfern has made an exciting debut.”

— Martha Grimes

“Talking's just a nervous habit.”

— Martha Grimes

“I cleared my throat - it isn't frogs you get in your throat; it's memories.”

— Martha Grimes

Most people see what they want to, or at least what they expect to.

— Martha Grimes

“The English inn stands permanently planted at the confluence of the roads of history, memory, and romance.”

— Martha Grimes

“Arnold was a dog's dog. Whenever he shuffled along walks and through alleyways, he always gave the impression of being on to something big.”

— Martha Grimes