Patricia Cornwell Quotes

“Survival my only hope. Success my only revenge”

— Patricia Cornwell

Leaves covered pavement like soggy cereal.

— Patricia Cornwell

“And suddenly the world was filled with wooden faces and flat voices - and, you were alone.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“He was pushing fifty, with a face life had chewed on, and long wisps of graying hair parted low on one side and combed over his balding pate.”

— Patricia Cornwell

I didn't know what I wanted. Maybe I never had. The emotional distance was never worth the togetherness, and yet I didn't learn. Nothing had changed. Had he reached for me, I would have forgotten to behave sensibly. Desire has no reason, and the need for intimacy had never stopped. I had not conjured up the images in years, his lips on mine, his hands, the urgency of our hunger. Now I was tormented by the memories.

— Patricia Cornwell

“Truth is relative, then. It is about timing. It is about what is safe. Truth is the luxury of the privileged, of people who have plenty of food and are not forced to hide because they are Jews. Truth can destroy, and therefore it is not always wise or even healthy to be truthful.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“Don't announce what you fear could happen or someone evil might make it come true.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“That's one of the perks if you're sick. You already feel bad enough and then people make you feel worse because they don't want to bother you.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“Then I will myself to feel nothing at all. It's not helpful to react the way a normal person would. I banish what will interfere with my clinical discipline and reason, I run it off and far away from me. After all these years I'm good at emptying myself out.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“Perhaps my greatest shame was that I could not show what I should, and I worried no one would ever know how much I cared. Crows”

— Patricia Cornwell

“It's not true that we are never given more than we can bear. Only it isn't given.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“You're only as good as the people around you.”

— Patricia Cornwell

For that matter I didn't understand Civil War reenactments. Why would you celebrate the biggest thing you ever lost? I quickly learned not to give voice to such skepticisms, and when asked if I was a Yankee I said I didn't follow baseball closely. That usually shut the person up.

— Patricia Cornwell

“When violence occurs anywhere, it is everybody's problem,”

— Patricia Cornwell

“When terrorists find something that works they keep on doing it. It's predictable.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“As was true with every powerful person I had known, and there were but a few, his greatness made him humble and kind.”

— Patricia Cornwell

This day could be our last and if it's in the cards then so be it. I'll prevent any bad thing I can. That's my life's mission. I also know how to accept finality, to give myself up to what I can't begin to change. I don't want to die. But I refuse to fear it. I wait for it without dread because there's no logic in living a tragedy before it's happened.

— Patricia Cornwell

-it's the d-isomer of a compound, the name of which won't mean anything to you-
-oh, yeah? how do you know it won't mean nothing to me?
-three-methoxy-n-methylmorphinan
-you're right. don't mean a dam thing to me

— Patricia Cornwell

“When the Ripper's murders began in the summer of 1888, there was no such thing as using science in police investigations. Imagine living in a time when a witness claiming to have seen you in the area of a violent crime might be all it takes to bring about your arrest. Maybe you're sent to prison. Maybe you're sentenced to death.”

— Patricia Cornwell

No one good or evil ceases to exist; life is energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed; it is recycled. Therefore, it is possible that the pure of heart and the purely evil have been here before and will be here again.

— Patricia Cornwell

“Crime reporting was aggressive in Richmond, an old Virginia city of 220,000, which last year was listed by the FBI as having the second-highest homicide rate”

— Patricia Cornwell

“Witnessed the moment of recognition that it was over or it wasn't. The look was never exactly the same. Rage, hate, shock, grief, anguish, terror, scorn, amusement, combinations of them, and nothing. As different as people are different.”

— Patricia Cornwell

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,' she quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson.

— Patricia Cornwell

“Apparently this was based on postings on the Internet, and I thought it all ridiculous, not quite sure who these Ripperologists were. I joked that their threat brought to mind Klingons in formation ready to fire upon the U.S.S. Enterprise.”

— Patricia Cornwell

Maybe nothing phased her until she was beaten to death on her marble floor, and I envision a blitz attack.

— Patricia Cornwell

“Her case in particular haunts me. Despite decades of autopsies and crime scenes, I can honestly say I've never encountered the extreme brutality shown in the only existing scene photographs from the Ripper case.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“Little things are important. Eating, sleeping, being clean, exercise. Regaining control.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“But to whom much is given much also can be taken,”

— Patricia Cornwell

Punishment isn't punishment if you don't feel punished, if you don't experience the suffering that's intended. It's all about perception. It's all about the way you react to something and that reaction is the real weapon.

— Patricia Cornwell

The word need is never good. I hope you never use it when you're talking about me,

— Patricia Cornwell

Importantly Lucy's past, and I envision

— Patricia Cornwell

“You really can't love unconditionally. People can burn and beat love out of you. They really can kill it, and it's not your fault you don't feel it anymore, and how liberating it is to finally realize that. Love isn't for better or for worse, through thick or thin. It damn well shouldn't be. Were Jack still alive, I would not love him. When”

— Patricia Cornwell

“DEDICATION To Staci”

— Patricia Cornwell

“A dramatic public display, Kay. The dam began to crumble with Columbine. It's not new, just the classification is. People have become addicted to attention, to fame. Profoundly disturbed individuals will kill and die for it.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“Technology made everything better for a while and now it seems life is circling back around to the dark ages.”

— Patricia Cornwell

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.

— Patricia Cornwell

“First of all, it does not deter crime, the death penalty.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“Night fell clean and cold in Dublin, and wind moaned beyond my room as if a million pipes played the air.”

— Patricia Cornwell

Being with someone who is smart and gives good advice adds tremendously wonderful elements to your life.

— Patricia Cornwell

I constantly remind people that crime isn't solved by technology; it's solved by people.

— Patricia Cornwell

“Everyone is doing forensics.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“I find it difficult to attend autopsies. Especially the smells.”

— Patricia Cornwell

When I was in second grade, my mother moved from Miami to this evangelical conservative environment in western North Carolina, two miles down the road from Billy Graham and his wife, Ruth.

— Patricia Cornwell

“I like crazy shoes or unusual cowboy boots and I collect big belt buckles.”

— Patricia Cornwell

I am a fan of Botox.

— Patricia Cornwell

“I like to get to bed with a clear head.”

— Patricia Cornwell

I won't put myself in a position where I'm vulnerable.

— Patricia Cornwell

“I've been stalked.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“Obviously people read the books in order to be entertained.”

— Patricia Cornwell

“When I was at college there were two things I vowed I'd never do. One was go to a funeral and the other was deal with computers. And then I ended up being a computer programmer in a morgue.”

— Patricia Cornwell