Drew Payne > Drew's Quotes

“There are women named Faith, Hope, Joy, and Prudence. Why not Despair, Guilt, Rage, and Grief? It seems only right. 'Tom, I'd like you to meet the girl of my dreams, Tragedy.' These days, Trajedi.”
― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

“Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“And this is Nymphadora-"
"Don't call me Nymphadora, Remus," said the young witch with a shudder. "It's Tonks."
"-Nymphadora Tonks, who prefers to be known by her surname only," finished Lupin.
"So would you if your fool of a mother had called you 'Nymphadora,' " muttered Tonks.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“It was a love affair, carried out by letters and parcels, though the love was all on my side.”
― Drew Payne, Case Studies in Modern Life

“I never thought I should live to grow blasé about the sound of gunfire, but so I have”
― George Orwell

“In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that just amused people. And most of the people that come and watch the gay Halloween parade, where all those excesses are on display, those are straight families, and they think it's funny. But what people don't think is so funny is when two middle-aged lawyers who are married to each other move in next door to you and your wife and they have adopted a Korean girl and they want to send her to school with your children and they want to socialize with you and share a drink over the backyard fence. That creeps people out, especially Christians. So, I don't think gay marriage is a conservative issue. I think it's a radical issue.”
― Edmund White

“At nineteen, my main mission in life was to “fit in” with the world around me. If I kept my head down and didn’t draw attention to myself then people would not guess my secret and not hate me for it, as I feared. It was a simple but very flawed plan, though at the time it was all I could see to do.

A Moment after Church, blog”
― Drew Payne

“I like you less when you don't like yourself.”
― Richard Stevenson, Death Trick

“He was the only man I knew who could roll his eyes over the telephone.”
― Richard Stevenson, Ice Blues

“Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional -- to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death.”
― Kate Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

“If you are an alien, how come you sound like you're from the north?'

'Lots of planets have a north!”
― Russell T Davies

“It's [the word “sorry”] the most infuriating word in the English language. Just a cheap way to behave badly then shelve responsibility by putting the onus on the other person to be forgiving.”
― Minette Walters, The Chameleon's Shadow

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“Heartbreak is a loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“It is better to lock up your heart with a merciless padlock, than to fall in love with someone who doesn't know what they mean to you.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Infinity Sign

“Hollywood brides keep the bouquets and throw away the grooms.”
― Groucho Marx

“Paying alimony is like feeding hay to a dead horse.”
― Groucho Marx

“It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“Don't forget, and don't let your reader forget, that the small world in which you have held him for the last hour or two hasn't ended. Be aware, and make him aware, that tomorrow all of its remaining inhabitants will pick up the broken fragments of their lives, and carry on.”
― Joseph Hansen

“It seems important to me that beginning writers ponder this—that since 1964, I have never had a book, story or poem rejected that was not later published. If you know what you are doing, eventually you will run into an editor who knows what he/she is doing. It may take years, but never give up. Writing is a lonely business not just because you have to sit alone in a room with your machinery for hours and hours every day, month after month, year after year, but because after all the blood, sweat, toil and tears you still have to find somebody who respects what you have written enough to leave it alone and print it. And, believe me, this remains true, whether the book is your first novel or your thirty-first.”
― Joseph Hansen

“She was sad and lost and alone in the dark," Cecil said. "She needed somebody to hold her."

"And you think she's going to get tired of that?"

"You did," Cecil said. "You shut me right out."

"It was your decision, not mine," Dave said. "You are the dearest thing in life to me. You're bright and funny and gentle and decent and full of life. And I will never get tired of you, and neither will Chrissie. It's not up to her anyway. You're the adult. Tell her the truth -- that it was an act of kindness that got out of hand."

"I can't hurt her like that," Cecil said.

"It will hurt more the longer you let it go on.”
― Joseph Hansen, Early Graves

“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, written by Christie in 1926, is perhaps the most quintessential golden-age murder mystery ever written in absolutely every way—except one. But it is this one spectacular difference that sets it apart from other books of the era and that catapulted Agatha Christie into the upper echelons of the genre. In fact, as the ending was so unorthodox and apparently broke the rules of the Detection Club’s oath—tongue-in-cheek though they were—there was a movement to expel Christie from the club entirely! Only a vote by fellow female crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers saved her. If this doesn’t make you intrigued to read the book, you don’t need to just take my word for it—in 2013, nearly ninety years after its publication, the British Crime Writers’ Association voted it the best crime novel ever, calling it “the finest example of the genre ever penned.” It features typical golden-era elements within the text, like a floor plan of all the rooms of the house and heavily buried clues, and I’m of the opinion that the only way to do this particular book justice is to read it. Don’t watch an adaptation, don’t listen to an audiobook, and don’t use an e-reading device and deny yourself the pleasure of the rustling pages peppered with nuance. Buy a copy of the book and read it. It’s the only way you can read between the lines of this clever tale.”
― Carla Valentine, The Science of Murder: The Forensics of Agatha Christie

“That’s what ghosts are—they’re testaments to what never should have happened and must be fixed before their spirits leave this world.”
― Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies