Home > Work > Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #1)
1 " Be grateful for every scar life inflicts on you. Where we’re unhurt is where we are false. Where we are wounded and healed is where our real self gets to show itself. That’s where you get to show who you really are "
― Sara Gran , Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (Claire DeWitt Mysteries, #1)
2 " You cannot follow another's footsteps to the truth," Silette wrote. "A hand can point the way. But the hand is not the teaching. The finger that points the way is not the way. The mystery is a payless land, and each detective must cut her own trail through a cruel territory."Believe nothing. Question everything. Follow only the clues. "
3 " It doesn't matter what people want to hear. It doesn't matter if people like you. It doesn't matter if the whole world thinks you're crazy. It doesn't matter whose heart you break. What matters is the truth. "
4 " Never be afraid to learn from the ether...That's where knowledge lives before someone hunts it, kills it, and mounts it in a book. "
5 " The detective thinks he is investigating a murder or a missing girl. But truly he is investigating something else altogether, something he cannot grasp hold of directly. Satisfaction will be rare. Uncertainty will be your natural state. Sureness will always elude you. The detective will always circle around what he wants, never seeing it whole. We do not go on despite this. We go on because of it. "
6 " There are no coincidences, only mysteries that haven't been solved, clues that haven't been placed. Most are blind to the language of the bird overhead, the leaf in our path, the phonographic record stuck in a groove, the unknown caller on the phone. They don't see the omens. They don't know the signs. "
7 " Those who try to grasp on to the mystery will never succeed. Only those who let it slip their fingers will come to know it, and hear its secrets "
8 " Omens change. Signs shift. Nothing is permanent. "
9 " I was glad I wasn’t pretty anymore. It was so much easier to do things like this without being pretty. "
10 " Each was over fifty and poor, probably homeless, wearing clothes that hadn't been washed this year. They were the same type of man you could see in any city in America, in a little park or square just off downtown, halfway to skid row. I think they started making them after the Civil War; fighters who'd lost their wars and lost their fight. Even when their side won, they lost. "
11 " The fat lady never really sings her last song. She only changes costumes and goes on to the next "
12 " The thing about this city,” Andray said. “It knows how to tell a beautiful story. It truly does. But if you’re looking for a happy ending, you better be lookin’ somewhere else. "
13 " But I knew I was there for a reason. There are no coincidences. Just opportunities you've been too dumb to take, doors you've been too blind to step through. "
14 " Consider the possibility,’” I said, quoting Silette, “‘that what we perceive as the future has already happened, and intuition is only a very good memory. "
15 " There are no coincidences", Silette wrote. "Only mysteries that haven't been solved, clues that haven't been placed. Most are blind to the language of the bird overheard, the leaf in our path, the phonographic record stuck in a groove, the unknown caller on the phone. They don't see the omens. They don't know how to read the signs. To them life is like a book with blank pages. But to the detective, it is an illuminated manuscript of mysteries. "
16 " To let go of the self is the highest calling of the self, something that few achieve. And something that every self, whether she knows it or not, aspires "
17 " Interviewer: What does it mean to you to be a Silettian detective?Murray: (Pause.) It means I was blind, and now I can see.Interviewer: And the drinking?Murray: Well. Some people need glasses to see, you know. "
18 " sometimes the world seem so fucked up, like nothing make any sense at all. Like there’s no sense at all. Just—just vicious like that. Just vicious. But then sometimes, sometimes, it’s like—like it all fit together perfect, like a puzzle. "
19 " there was two Bibles,” he said. “Or one, but it been split in half. He said half’s in the book, on paper. But the other half is inside people. You born with it, but it’s up to you to find out. You gotta learn to see it for yourself. That’s the only way. "
20 " There are no coincidences. Just opportunities you’re too dumb to see, doors you’ve been too blind to step through. "
