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1 " Do no harm and leave the world a better place than you found it. "
― Patricia Cornwell
2 " rain slowly slides down the glass as if the night is crying. "
― Patricia Cornwell , Trace (Kay Scarpetta, #13)
3 " If you can create a weapon that causes enough fear the fear itself can cause damage that's as paralyzing and destructive as any physical device like a bomb or a laser gun. Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently. "
― Patricia Cornwell , Chaos (Kay Scarpetta, #24)
4 " I wouldn't want to assume that all men are like you. If I did, I know I would give them up entirely "
― Patricia Cornwell , The Body Farm (Kay Scarpetta, #5)
5 " 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 , Body of Evidence (Kay Scarpetta, #2)
6 " Has all the trappings of a mystery novel, doesn't it? "
7 " Most of us feel isolated and paranoid during stressful times. We feel alone in the wilderness. "
8 " A part of me expects more of my only sister....Dorothy has always been exactly who she is, and for me to hope for anything better reminds me of a quote attributed to Einstein: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Dorothy is predictable. She does the same thing repeatedly and expects not a different result but the same one she got the last time she did whatever she wants with little regard for anyone else. So maybe she's the sane one.... "
9 " Be careful who you choose for an enemy because that is who you become most like, Anna tosses Nietzsche's quote up into the air. She serves up words she has heard me say in the past. "
― Patricia Cornwell , The Last Precinct (Kay Scarpetta, #11)
10 " Leaves covered pavement like soggy cereal. "
11 " rights are honored only in the breach. most people don't get agents or cops assigned to them until they're already raped or dead. "
― Patricia Cornwell , From Potter's Field (Kay Scarpetta, #6)
12 " When what we believe we’ve mastered is no longer predictable we’re not fine. The world suddenly is a very scary place. It loses its charm. "
― Patricia Cornwell , Dust (Kay Scarpetta, #21)
13 " In my forties, my optimism was boundless. I had really good health and tremendous success which allowed me to do anything I wanted. "
14 " I intended to beat down any lingering resistance with bluntness. "
15 " i had fired 9-millimeters before and didn't like them. they weren't as accurate as my .38 special. they weren't as safe, and they could jam. i had never been one to substitute quantity for quality, and there was no substitution for being informed and practiced "
16 " I feel something change in me... I feel a flat calm, a detachment, the way I get when something is too much and yet l must function and in fact function at the highest level. I know what I'm in for, only a fool wouldn't know that... "
― Patricia Cornwell , Red Mist (Kay Scarpetta, #19)
17 " 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 , Depraved Heart (Scarpetta, #23)
18 " Let's be honest, the world's always been a scary place with very little charm." I try to brush it off as I've brushed off the flu, as I brushed off the death of my father when I was young, as I've brushed off so much since Benton has known me. "
19 " . . . she was a tabula rasa when it came to appropriate behavior. To say Lucy was difficult is like saying lightening is hazardous. It's a statement of fact that will always be a given. "
20 " every time you get rid of one toad there's another to take his place "
― Patricia Cornwell , Cruel & Unusual (Kay Scarpetta, #4)
