Women Sleuths Quotes

The busy snoops like us can leave no stone unturned, Alma said. ~ Ed Lynskey

Norm was lean, his short, straight black hair parted on the side, his mustache trimmed like he'd never heard of Adolf Hitler. ~ Jane Sunday

Sheriff Fox was running his fingers through his thin hair. In a few short years, he'd look bald as a peeled apple. The Snoop sisters and their sidekick, the town's bag lady no less, had traipsed into his office without knocking first. His admin (he couldn't remember their names to save his life) had ushered them in, and they'd just dumped this hot potato into his lap. ~ Ed Lynskey

He wrote to his father every day. His platoon called his dad a girlfriend. ~ Noorilhuda

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
A grave matter has just arisen." Etta hadn't intended to make the pun. She went on. "It's a problem right up your alley. ~ Ed Lynskey

She craved a tall glass of the fresh-squeezed lemonade from the pitcher she'd left chilling in the fridge. Two glasses served with a generous slice of pound cake with orange glaze icing sounded twice as nice. ~ Ed Lynskey

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
I know what." Isabel reached under the end table, took out the game board, and rattled the Band-Aid box containing the letter tiles. "It's been a week-and-a-half since our last Scrabble game. ~ Ed Lynskey

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
"The police should be in it, not us. We're out of here." Bill did an about-face to retrace their route to the door.
Piper whipped out a hand and snagged him by the shirttail. Her tone returned to crisp and decisive. "Slow down, Roadrunner. I'm not ready to leave. We've got work to do."
Incredulous, he stared gape-mouthed at her. "You better explain," he said.
She wiggled her nose. "I'm growing nosier by the second about the circumstances surrounding Anna's murder. ~ Ed Lynskey

Quote taken from Chapter 1
Bill hung up, grumbling to nobody in particular. Emily was about the only caller using the landline phone, and he regretted not getting rid of it. The Robinses were probably the lone holdouts on their city block to still have one. ~ Ed Lynskey

Megan stepping back let her glance switch from Alma to Isabel and return to Alma. No doubt about it, thought Megan. Created as much alike as any sisters ever had been, their resemblance started with their matching red-and-white polka dot blouses. Since she was a young girl, she had matched their eye colors to their different personalities. ~ Ed Lynskey

Within the same hour as the murder took place, Isabel Trumbo sat in her armchair dozing, the Alaskan Outdoor magazine on her lap. Her kid sister Alma fidgeted in the other armchair, from time to time picking up her newspaper folded over to the day's crossword puzzle. ~ Ed Lynskey

So you say. I just hope you don't catch some exotic dinosaur ailment because Eustis probably doesn't stock the right pills to treat it. ~ Ed Lynskey

Quote taken from Chapter 1 of The Corpse Wore Gingham:
"You love to figure out things as much as I do," Piper said.
"Like what?" Bill asked.
"You fix broken stuff," Piper replied.
"Repairing a broken toaster or steam iron is far different than unraveling a murder mystery," Bill said. ~ Ed Lynskey

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
"Is Petey Samson a bloodhound for real?" Blue asked. "I could've sworn he's a mixed breed, what my folks used to call a pound mutt."
"Oh, brother," Alma said. "I wished you hadn't said that."
"I'll have you know Petey Samson is no pound mutt," Isabel said, shaking her finger at Blue. "His best breeding lies in his bloodhound line," she said.
"I didn't know that," Blue said.
"Pay no mind to Isabel," Alma said. "She's just being overprotective of her fur baby. ~ Ed Lynskey

How do you circumvent a mind bent upon lying to get away from the truth? ~ Noorilhuda

You're a nosy sleuth like me because you can't help it, Alma said. ~ Ed Lynskey

Hope turned sly. "What if the slice of apple pie is served a la mode?"

Smiling, Peggy Sue regarded her tall, brunette, and blue-eyed friend. "Is the slice of apple pie served a la mode with three scoops of homemade vanilla ice cream piled on top of it? ~ Lyn Key

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
Alma idly wondered if he'd blow his nose, too.
He did. Twice. He made it honk, the sound reminding Alma of Harpo Marx squeezing his bulb horn.
Isabel darted a look at Alma, giving her the don't-you-dare-giggle squint.
Alma dug her fingernails into her palm, the inappropriate laugh rising from her throat as she looked up at the ceiling. Blue refolded his handkerchief and returned it to inside his seersucker jacket. Thankfully, Alma's urge to laugh subsided. ~ Ed Lynskey

He also knew the language of The Klingons, but the army had no use for it. ~ Noorilhuda

Aurora, you're a child, live like one, don't act like one. Enjoy the innocence, dump the immaturity. ~ Noorilhuda

Speaking of the devil, what is Alma doing right now?"

"Well..." Sitting in her favorite armchair, Isabel craned her neck around to peer down the hallway to where she saw Alma squealing and clapping hands at their pet beagle Petey Sampson. With his tail wagging, he woof-woofed at her, and she woof-woofed right back at him. ~ Ed Lynskey

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
The June afternoon had clear, blue skies - ideal weather for birdwatching. ~ Ed Lynskey

I ask you, what would you do if you could erase one bad memory and retain all that was beautiful in your life? Would you not move heaven and earth - and get loads of therapy - to have that? ~ Noorilhuda

When your ship comes in, don't be in the bathroom with your pants around your ankles."

quoted by Frank McNichols, father of Rose McNichols in A Nose for Hanky Panky, a Granite Cove Mystery ~ Sharon Love Cook

Isabel frowned. "Alma Trumbo, you did not just dig up a human bone from our flowerbed. It's got to be a dinosaur bone, dinky or not."
"A dinosaur bone, eh?" The short, stout Alma gave her tall, slim sister the old up and down. "What then, are we the Flintstones living in Bedrock? ~ Ed Lynskey

February is the cruelest month in western Oregon. ~ Judy Nedry

In every siutation , there is a FINE LINE between what is right and what is not so right.THAT is the MOMENT when one has to stop and look which way to go!! These MAGICAL MOMENTS determine the DIRECTION of our lives ! ~ Abha Maryada Banerjee

I remember every player - every single one - who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, "or in a correctional institution," as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway. ~ Pat Summitt

I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception. They have every right to know about their own bodies. I would strikeout
I would scream from the housetops. I would tell the world what was going on in the lives of these poor women. I would be heard. No matter what it should cost. I would be heard. ~ Margaret Sanger

British women can't cook. ~ Prince Philip

Now, I cannot imagine where women ever got the idea that they must be perfect in order to be loved or successful. (Ha ha ha! Just kidding! I can totally imagine: We got it from every single message society has ever sent us! Thanks, all of human history!) ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Early 1990s, Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, attracted international notice with her book You Just Don't Understand. Her book, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for over four years, argued that men and women often talk past each other without appreciating that the other sex is almost another culture. Women, for example, are highly attentive to the thoughts and feelings of others; men are less so. Women view men's speaking styles as blunt and uncaring; men view women's as indirect and obscure. ~ James W. Pennebaker

There are a lot of women writers who never get married and don't have kids. I am married, but I didn't marry until I was 43. I knew when I was young that if I had to make a choice between being married and being a writer, I would have chosen to be a writer. I think it's a career where you have to put the career first. I don't have kids but - and luckily everyone isn't like this - I think if you have that passion, in a way, your career is your child. ~ Candace Bushnell

And the mainstreaming of the sex industry reflects that inequality. It is still women who are dieting or undergoing surgery on their bodies; still women stripping in the clubs while the men chant and cheer; still women, not men, who believe that their ability to reach for fame and success will be defined by how closely they conform to one narrow image of sexuality. If this is the new sexual liberation, it looks too uncannily like the old sexism to convince many of us that this is the freedom we have sought. ~ Natasha Walter

Women writers specifically ... are the ultimate outsiders. ~ Janet Fitch

Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event. ~ Milan Kundera

Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't. ~ Mary Karr

The world is full of many beautiful voices; I will perform with many of them. I love women's voices. ~ Andrea Bocelli

Made to the other women when I joined them at night. The pleasures that arise from sense-objects are bound to end, and thus they are only sources of pain. Don't get attached to them. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman. ~ Betty Friedan

Men to the left! Women to the right!
Eight words spokern quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother. ~ Elie Wiesel

Remember that writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know; and, most of all, that even in our post-postmodern era, writing has a moral purpose. With twenty-six shapes arranged in varying patterns, we can tell every story known to mankind, and make up all the new ones - indeed, we can do so in most of the world's known tongues. If you can give language to experiences previously starved for it, you can make the world a better place. ~ Andrew Solomon

If a woman is successful, she'd better duck, because they'll be out to get her. ~ Leona Helmsley

We know that the most dangerous places in the world are more often than not the most dangerous places for women, where women are denied their rights and oppressed. These are the places that are unstable and where extremism often takes hold. ~ Melanne Verveer

Dear to the heart of a girl is her own beauty and charm. ~ Ovid

i have been told many times by family, friends, colleagues and strangers that I, a black African Muslim lesbian, am not included in this vision; that my dreams are a reflection of my upbringing in a decadent, amoral Western society that has corrupted who I really am. But who am I, really? Am I allowed to speak for myself or must my desires form the battleground for causes I do not care about? My answer to that is simple: 'no one allows anyone anything.' By rejecting that notion you discover that only you can give yourself permission on how to lead your life, naysayers be damned. In the end something gives way. The earth doesn't move but something shifts. That shift is change and change is the layman's lingo for that elusive state that lovers, dreamers, prophets and politicians call 'freedom'. ~ Diriye Osman

I am thirsty, and very susceptible to flattery ... you could talk me into anything ... "
"So much for fighting the good fight," I observed dryly. "He'll have a harem within a week."
Bones watched Juan disappear down the hall, nuzzling the blonde's neck in a manner that didn't speak only of hunger. "He's a fine bloke. He'll learn."
"Learn what?" At least he can't get or pass diseases anymore, I thought. That's one advantage turning Juan into a vampire did for womankind.
Bones put an arm around me as we headed toward the exit of the flesh feast. "He'll learn that many women can satisfy for a short period of time, but when he falls in love, only one will sustain him forever."
I cast him a sideways glance "Are you trying to seduce me?"
His lips curled with promise. "Absolutely. ~ Jeaniene Frost

I'll get up in the morning while they've all got hangovers and run my 5 miles. But the women who do run are usually 10 years younger than me and they're really obsessed about running. That's all they do. They're really boring. ~ Trisha Goddard

What made their marriage more than a run-of-the-mill case of domestic estrangement was her refusal to accept her lot. She stayed furious all the days of her life - so sure of her ground, so successfully spoiled, that she was impervious to the social pressures and propaganda that made most women settle down to play the part of wife. ~ Lorna Sage

When one demands equal rights for women, one needs to assess in which areas women can work better than men, in which they can work like men, and in which they need protection and affirmative action for when they cannot work like men. ~ Pervez Musharraf

Younger women have no problem in reconciling beauty with ambitions as a professional woman. ~ Camille Paglia

Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in my bath and she'd come in and sink my boats. ~ Woody Allen

You've got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it's unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it'll be a cyanide capsule. ~ David Nicholls

It is not the dignitaries who are the real cause of hope, however. What is an enormously refreshing and hopeful sign is to see the young people who make up the membership of the Federalist Society. Earnest, intelligent, and unpretentious, these are the young men and women of whom any nation and any age could be proud. ~ Thomas Sowell

The time's come: there's a terrific thunder-cloud advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up ... It's going to blow away all this idleness and indifference, and prejudice against work ... I'm going to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years' time every man and woman will be working. ~ Anton Chekhov

It was strange the way that people venerated truth. Everyone seemed to strive for it, as though it were some unalloyed good, a perfect gem of glittering rectitude. Women and men might disagree about its definition, but priests and prostitutes, mothers and monks all mouthed the word with respect, even reverence. No one seemed to realize how stooped the truth could be, how twisted and how ugly. ~ Brian Staveley

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I think the differences between men and women, it's kind of hard to define what those are and the challenges, what they are. I think there are challenging things for everybody. ~ Nick Jonas

Here is the chance for young women and young men of devotion to lift again the banner of humanity and to walk toward a civilization which will be free and intelligent; which will be healthy and unafraid, and build in the world a culture led by black folk and joined by peoples of all colors and all races - without poverty, ignorance and disease! ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

I am no saviour. I'm absolutely the last person on the planet who can practically help. I don't know how to make the different types of therapeutic feeding milk. I'm no chemist. I'm no doctor. I'm no engineer. I can't manufacture polio vaccines or organise their transportation to the health centres in Saramoussayah or Bissikirima. I can't build schools, or design drainage systems. I can't provide the women and children of Mandiana with water.All I can do now is help make people aware of what is happening, of what they are doing. That is all that I can do. For now. ~ Tom Hiddleston

By the time I came to L.A. I'd already cried on movies of the week with two of the women from 'Knots Landing'. ~ Ryan Reynolds

It has crossed my mind that I would like to run or help to run a pro women's tournament, although I really don't know much about organizing an event (it seems overwhelming actually). ~ Jennifer Wyatt

The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seeds as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had a sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Jake's story but, insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom. ~ Willa Cather

In the past, few women have tried and even fewer have succeeded. ~ Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

The small lives of women don't make for good stories. That's why there were no girls in the stories Myrddin told, unless they were there as a prize for the hero to win at the end of his adventures. ~ Philip Reeve

The development of the doctrine of international arbitration, considered from the standpoint of its ultimate benefits to the human race, is the most vital movement of modern times. In its relation to the well-being of the men and women of this and ensuing generations, it exceeds in importance the proper solution of various economic problems which are constant themes of legislative discussion and enactment. ~ William Howard Taft

I speak of a Canada where men and women of aboriginal ancestry, of French and British heritage, of the diverse cultures of the world, demonstrate the will to share this land in peace, in justice and with mutual respect. ~ Pierre Trudeau

How many were there of these homely visionaries, prophetic pythonesses, sententious prophetesses, raving old women, swooning damsels, talking crickets, these convulsionaries haunted by incubi, who 'dropped down dead with epilepsy,' how many the matrons desirous of regeneration, and the old women seeking 'purgation?' How many the 'fountains of deceit,' the 'amphitheaters of monstrosities,' how many have tumbled into the 'cavern of nothingness.' Collective infatuation, 'epidemics of the imagination,' 'filthy dreams' born of 'obscene' and delirious 'fantasy,' 'nocturnal flights through the air,' 'brutal releases of pent-up lust' by "melancholic women, endowed with vigorous imaginations and ferocious animals spirits, or indeed old women consumed by all manner of filthy and libidinous desires, which they abet with generous quantities of liquor: no wonder, then, that when asleep they are prey to such nefarious deliriums ~ Piero Camporesi

She didn't understand how it worked. She didn't understand why people starved to death and children ended up in orphanages while barren women longed for babies. She didn't understand why a cigarette break could save one person's life while driving home to get your daughter's hair bow could snatch another's. She would never understand why those people. Why that train. Why her.
But maybe she'd been asking the wrong question.
Maybe comfort wasn't found in the why.
Maybe comfort was to be found in the who.
A God who wept. ~ Katie Ganshert

You've learned that when it comes to some people, nothing would ever good enough. You have to be willing to accept that you loved them to the best of your ability, and only lost someone who caused you to lose more of yourself. Those people aren't worth saving because the question is, who will save you? ~ Charlena E. Jackson

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck or running a business or bringing up a family. The teach the truth by living it. ~ James A. Garfield

Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country. ~ Isabel Allende