Sophie Hannah Quotes

Poirot smoothed his mustache, as if he imagined that laughing might have shaken it out of shape. ~ Sophie Hannah

We cannot help how we feel, but we can choose whether or not to act upon those feelings. ~ Sophie Hannah

I always notice the dysfunctional dynamic of human relationships because most places where you encounter it, people are trying to pretend it isn't happening. ~ Sophie Hannah

In a crime novel, if you are going to have a big revelation in chapter 30, you have to plant the information in chapters three and 11. ~ Sophie Hannah

There are very few well-adjusted people in my books. But I do think that's normal. Because everyone does have their issues and hang-ups. ~ Sophie Hannah

Cambridge is heaven, I am convinced it is the nicest place in the world to live. As you walk round, most people look incredibly bright, as if they are probably off to win a Nobel prize. ~ Sophie Hannah

She'd buy diamond-studded earplugs and go and lie on a beach in the Caribbean where the whining of jealous bastards wouldn't reach her. ~ Sophie Hannah

Sometimes, convenience has the appearance of logic. ~ Sophie Hannah

My characters all have issues, but I don't see that as weird or abnormal because I think in real life there are very few bland, normal people. ~ Sophie Hannah

Think about how hard, not to mention ineffective, it would be to stand up in public and say, 'I did something unforgiveable that only a scoundrel would do, yet I'm not a scoundrel and you must forgive me.' It sounds like a paradox, doesn't it? Well, it's one we must embrace if we are to make any progress as a species, because we all do the bad things that only bad people would do, as well as the good things that only good people would do, which is why we mustn't hold anything against one another. If we want better apologies, we need to be more forgiving - it's as simple as that. ~ Sophie Hannah

Sometimes a gentle perambulation causes a new idea to rise to the surface of one's thoughts. ~ Sophie Hannah

We manufacture anger to give ourselves the illusion of power when we feel weak and helpless. ~ Sophie Hannah

It would not have done Poirot any good whatever to state that his wishes were the precise opposite of hers in this respect. Nothing fascinated him more than the private passions of strangers he would probably never meet again. ~ Sophie Hannah

Is Jason intelligent enough to realise that if you describe a thirty-eight-year-old woman as middle-aged, she's more likely to want to kill you than help you? Because Lauren isn't. ~ Sophie Hannah

I'm not cut out to lug babies around! ~ Sophie Hannah

That's not me talking, it's your inner voice. I'd attempt the accent, only I don't speak low self-esteem. It's a language I've never needed to learn. ~ Sophie Hannah

One cannot do such harm to another and not wound one's own soul in the process. ~ Sophie Hannah

Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention. ~ Sophie Hannah

It is the job of art to replace unhappy true stories with happier inventions. ~ Sophie Hannah

If we knew more about psychology, we would be better equipped to deal with other people's psychological damage which they might project onto us. ~ Sophie Hannah

Why treat the people closest to you like strangers? ~ Sophie Hannah

...nostalgic people yearn for the past for a good reason---because they missed it, they weren't fully there when they should have been, when it was the present. ~ Sophie Hannah

Wall of lies?' Proust muttered. 'Is that the one that borders the orchard of obsession that contains the tree of lunacy? ~ Sophie Hannah

What you cannot imagine, you cannot fear. ~ Sophie Hannah

I've been alone with my thoughts for too long; I'm starting to feel unreal. ~ Sophie Hannah

Some writers, I'm told, look for their characters' surnames in telephone directories. I don't - it seems too obvious. Or too deliberate: if you go looking for names, you're bound to find them, of course, but I've always had a superstitious hunch that the names you find by accident are always going to be better and more satisfying somehow. ~ Sophie Hannah

For me, a big part of writing psychological thrillers is choosing crimes committed for motives which would only apply to a particular person in a particular situation; a unique, one-off motive that is born out of someone's particular range of psychological afflictions. ~ Sophie Hannah

He wondered how many new starts a person was entitled to, how many times one could say it was the other person's fault and truly believe it. ~ Sophie Hannah

You know how I feel about Occam's Razor. The simplest answer isn't usually the right one. Devious and unlikely is everywhere.' 'You ought to launch your own theory: Occam's Beard, you could call it. ~ Sophie Hannah

No highbrow literary type would ever say 'Moby Dick' is good but it's just about a whale, or a Jane Austen would be important if she wasn't just writing about romantic relationships. ~ Sophie Hannah

My father, whose hobby was collecting secondhand cricket books, came back from a book fair one day with a copy of 'The Body In The Library.' ~ Sophie Hannah

I am actually incredibly contented and jolly. But, and I have no idea why this is, I have a really strong empathy with all kinds of warped and destructive modes of thinking. I don't know why, but those things co-exist. ~ Sophie Hannah

It is hate that makes people kill, Mr Catchpool, not love. Never love. Please be rational. ~ Sophie Hannah

He didn't subscribe to the view ... that spirituality was a fast track to happiness. He believed the opposite was true: spiritual people suffered more than most. ~ Sophie Hannah

Lies were lethal, however honourable the intentions of the liar. They deprived people of the opportunity to know the basic facts of their own lives. ~ Sophie Hannah

A loose tile; Poirot could not sleep in a room with such a thing. ~ Sophie Hannah

Weak people always attack strong people - it's safer. It's weak people who are dangerous, who lash out uncontrollably and hurt you back. Stong people can walk away - no repercussions, you see, if you attack a stong person. ~ Sophie Hannah

Its weak people who are dangerous, who lash out uncontrollably and hurt you back. Strong people can walk away- no repercussions, you see, if you attack a strong person. ~ Sophie Hannah

But we'll stumble on, she and I, into our messy future. And we'll have each other ~ Sophie Hannah

No one has been buried at Mill Road Cemetery in Cambridge, England, for many years, and so the place has a shady, overgrown magic about it. ~ Sophie Hannah

No attack is ever really an attack on the victim. It's the perpetrator attacking an aspect of himself that he loathes. He or she. ~ Sophie Hannah

What they'd got was a fat, balding academic who bandied about the phrase "family annihilation", especially when there were cameras pointed at him, and mentioned the titles of books and articles he'd written to anyone who would listen; who blatantly thought he was the mutt's nuts, as Sellers had so aptly put it. ~ Sophie Hannah

I want my books to explore motives which make people think, 'Wow! Imagine the psychological state you'd have to be in for that to be your motive!' Whereas things like blackmail, jealousy - they're rational reasons for committing murder. ~ Sophie Hannah

She was irritated, briefly, by the thought that she might be becoming more mature. Why should she become a better person when no one else did? ~ Sophie Hannah

I am trying to write novels for properly clever people, but I also want them to be proper novels that also stick in a person's mind and have an atmosphere about them. ~ Sophie Hannah

Nobody has ever written as many enjoyable, fun-to-read crime novels as Agatha Christie. It's all about the storytelling and the pleasure of the reader. She doesn't want to be deep or highbrow. ~ Sophie Hannah

When a writer tries to copy another writer, it's doomed to fail. ~ Sophie Hannah

If you only have one world, one life, then however brilliant it is most of the time, you have nowhere to run when you need to escape from it for a while. ~ Sophie Hannah

Alas, the human mind is a perverse, uncontrollable organ, ~ Sophie Hannah

There comes a point in most cases - and by no means only those in which Hercule Poirot has involved himself - when one starts to feel that it would be a greater comfort, and actually no less effective, to talk only to oneself and dispense with all attempts to communicate with the outside world. ~ Sophie Hannah

I will be angry until my dying day, Mr Catchpool. Greater sinners persecuting lesser sinners in the name of morality - that's something worth raging about. ~ Sophie Hannah

Look at us. One bleeding body, one corpse, and a husk who's been half dead for years. No one who took an objective look at this room could think it was anything but too late, Ruth. For all of us. ~ Sophie Hannah

Crime fiction is a way of satisfying that nosy need to know. ~ Sophie Hannah

With me, even if my life depended on it, I wouldn't be able to cry. Not with somebody there. Because even if I'm talking about bad and upsetting things, if there is somebody else in the room, I am trying to entertain them. If there is somebody there, I am in performance mode. I can only cry if I am on my own. ~ Sophie Hannah

Simon would disapprove, in the way that people who lacked life experience always disapproved of others having adventures they had so far missed out on. ~ Sophie Hannah

A lot of women feel like they should be enjoying motherhood, they should be fulfilled and shouldn't be thinking, 'I wish I didn't have to do this.' ~ Sophie Hannah

Too much self-esteem, thought Simon: the real curse of our age. ~ Sophie Hannah

The brilliant thing about swimming is that, while you're doing it, there's nothing else you could be getting on with, like the ironing or sorting out the children. My mind goes into free-float mode; some of the best ideas for plots come into my head while I'm ploughing up and down the pool. ~ Sophie Hannah

I'm snobby about books that aren't crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there's no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I'm like, 'Gah, this obviously isn't a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?' ~ Sophie Hannah

Try as I might, Agatha Christie is unique. The actual writing style can't be exactly the same, so instead of trying to replicate it exactly, the way I got around it was by inventing a new narrator. ~ Sophie Hannah

Are men like babies? Is trying to distract them a better tactic than asking them to behave reasonably? ~ Sophie Hannah

You can always, and easily, give somebody the gift of hope and faith, even in the midst of despair. ~ Sophie Hannah

My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak. ~ Sophie Hannah

make decisions based on hope, not fear. ~ Sophie Hannah

No, thanks,' said Sam, who had never understood why he often refused drinks he would have liked to accept. ~ Sophie Hannah

No ramifications whatsoever. You're not going to ramificate; you don't know what it means. You don't know which of the words I use are real words and which I'm making up ~ Sophie Hannah

Agatha Christie never wrote books that just started with a dead body, and a 'Let's find out who the murderer is', which is kind of mysterious but not that mysterious. She always started with, 'How can this thing be happening; isn't it strange?' ~ Sophie Hannah

All through childhood, I wrote verses and mysteries. There is, for me, one connection: structure. My poetry is metrical, rhyming. ~ Sophie Hannah

I thought to myself, 'No matter what happens from now on, even if my heart ends up in pieces, this makes it all worth it, this moment. ~ Sophie Hannah

Today isn't a "waiting period" before real life begins. Right now has Christ's name written all over it. Living passionately for God starts at this moment. Joy and satisfaction can be found in God today. I love what C.H. Spurgeon wrote, determining to make the monst of his time, "the truest lengthening of life is to live while we live, wasting no time but using every hour for the highest ends. So be it this day." And so be it tomorrow, the next day, and the next. ~ Hannah Farver

Keefe was going to slay her over this ~ Shannon Messenger

Love and fear. The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid. ~ Kristin Hannah

Already in 1915, Sophie Tauber divides the surface of her aquarelle into squares and rectangles which she then juxtaposes horizontally and perpendicularly as Mondrian, Itten and Paul Klee did in the same period, fh). She constructs them as if they were masonry work. The colors are luminous, ranging from the raw yellow to deep red or blue. ~ Hans Arp

Hannah! You've simply got to stop finding bodies. I swear you attract them like a magnet. If you're not careful, everyone's going to get the wrong impression of you." - Delores Swenson ~ Joanne Fluke

Sometimes my colleagues joke and call me Hannah. ~ Hanoi Hannah

I'm blushing at my own stupid, nonsensical, meaningless thought process, which, by the way, nobody knows about except me. ~ Sophie Kinsella

We expect everything and are prepared for nothing. ~ Sophie Swetchine

Anita sighed dramatically. It was ~ Kristin Hannah

Hannah was about to burst with excitement, which would have been disgusting because she would have sprayed blood, guts and glitter in every direction. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I love coming back to Edinburgh. It's nice to spend real time here. ~ Sophie Wu

Footsteps approach the kitchen. Garrett wanders in, wiping sweat off his brow. When he notices Sabrina, he brightens. "Oh good. You're here. Hold on - gotta grab something."

She turns to me as if to say, Is he talking to me?

He's already gone, though, his footsteps thumping up the stairs.

At the table, Hannah runs a hand through her hair and gives me a pleading look. "Just remember he's your best friend, okay?"

That doesn't sound ominous.

When Garrett returns, he's holding a notepad and a ballpoint pen, which he sets on the table as he sits across from Sabrina. "Tuck," he says. "Sit. This is important."

I'm so baffled right now. Hannah's resigned expression doesn't help in lessening the confusion.

Once I'm seated next to Sabrina, Garrett flips open the notepad, all business. "Okay. So let's go over the names."

Sabrina raises an eyebrow at me.

I shrug, because I legitimately don't know what the fuck he's talking about.

"I've put together a solid list. I really think you're going to like these." But when he glances down at the page, his face falls. "Ah crap. We can't use any of the boy names."

"Wait." Sabrina holds up a hand, her brow furrowed. "You're picking names for our baby?"

He nods, busy flipping the page.

My baby mama gapes at me.

I shrug again.

"Just out of curiosity, what were the boy names?" Grace hedges, ~ Elle Kennedy

Teach the boys how to be gentlemen and Marah how to be strong. ~ Kristin Hannah

Marriage is a partnership, not a corporate venture. ~ Sophie Page

She was a girl with strange abilities and a different way of looking at the world. What she decided to do with these things was up to her. ~ Shannon Messenger

It's not just like that. I can't just swim away."
"Why not?"
"I'm afraid I'll drown." He looks up and gives the world's smallest smile. He takes a deep breath with those lungs. "I'm afraid I'll drown. ~ Hannah Moskowitz

There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil. ~ Hannah Arendt

Animals lived and died. People lived and died. Nature changed in cycles, and each year it all went round again. Fate was a concept for people who needed a reason for everything, a bigger sense of purpose, and so often there was neither reason nor purpose. ~ Sophie Green

This future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself. ~ Hannah

I traveled for seven years, and when I came back home I was completely lost. I didn't know what to do with my life, so I decided to let people decide for me. For month I followed strangers on the street. For the pleasure of following, not because the party interested me. I photographed them without their knowledge, took note of their movements, and finally lost sight of them. At the end of January 1980, I chose a man and followed him to Venice. That's how I started. That's all. ~ Sophie Calle

One day you look in the mirror and you see your parents' sadness in your eyes. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

There are always times in life that you don't fit in. But you have to go forward and make a place for yourself. That's what growing up is all about. Being strong and believing in yourself-even when you're most afraid. ~ Kristin Hannah

She had tried to be loved by him; more important, she had tried to keep loving him, but in the end, one was impossible as the other. ~ Kristin Hannah

I found out about reviews early on. They're mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That's probably why I'm less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason. ~ Barry Hannah

How did you tell a man that you'd grown up, that you'd learned true love wasn't a night of passionate sex under a sky lit up by fireworks, but an ordinary Sunday morning when your husband brought you a glass of water, two aspirins, and a heating pad for your cramps? ~ Kristin Hannah

People know not to mess with my friends or my family because it's not going to work out well for you. ~ Hannah Simone

After so many solitary years, spent tucked away in convents and forgotten in boarding schools, Isabelle never took for granted the fact that now she had friends, people whom she cared about and who cared about her. ~ Kristin Hannah

But that shadow self of hers wasn't so sure. The ugly, toxic thought was smaller than a drop of blood, yet it poisoned the entire stream. ~ Kristin Hannah

He even said you once threw al your husband's clothes onto the street and invited the neighbors to help themselves!" says Ellen with a bright laugh. "He's got such an imagination!"
My face flames. Damn. I thought he was asleep when I did that. ~ Sophie Kinsella

I still go to bed sad, and wake up sad, and it still hurts like hell, but there are moments during the day when it hurts less. Sometimes I can think of June and not want to burst into tears or put my fist through a wall. Sometimes I'm close to happy and it doesn't even hurt. Much. I'll never be the way I was before, but maybe that's okay. Life goes on, I'm going on, even without her. Not every day hurts. Not every breath hurts.
Maybe that's all we can really ask for. ~ Hannah Harrington

You don't want to be innocent in the world of 'Game of Thrones.' ~ Sophie Turner