“Have I not taught you that pain is merely the other face of pleasure? That a cry of agony sounds no different from a cry of ecstasy? Tonight you will enjoy both, without guilt, without blame, because I am the one in command. Do you not feel yourself craving it, longing for it Are you not already wet, your body preparing itself to accommodate what is to come?”
Source: The Shape of Night
“But fear is part of your game, isn't it?" I look at him. "The fear that you might hurt me. That you might actually use that thing on
me." I glance at the billy club, lying a few feet away, and I shudder. "Did it not excite you, just a little?" He smiles and I see the gleam of cruelty beneath the surface of those dark eyes.
"You wouldn't really use it on me, would you?"
"That is the mystery, is it not? How far will I go? Will I use the whip too savagely and tear your beautiful back? You do not know. You cannot predict what I will do next." He slides his fingers down my cheek. "Danger is intoxicating, Ava. So is pain. I give you only as much as you want. As much as you can bear."
"I don't know what I can bear."
"This we shall learn.”
Source: The Shape of Night
“He looked at her, and she couldn't contradict him. Nor could she offer any false reassurance. Silence, at least, was honest.”
Source: Life Support
“With almost reverential silence, Vivian reached deep into the chest cavity. She seemed to caress the heart, her fingers stroking the walls, tracing the course of each coronary artery. The organ pulsed vigorously in her hands. 'It's beautiful'she said softly. Eyes shining, she looked across at Abby. 'It's just the heart for Josh.”
Source: Harvest
“Some people just couldn't commit to their own health. Instead they wasted their energy worrying about things they could do nothing about.”
Source: Life Support
“Only by the shuddering of the bed did Toby realize the girl was sobbing. Molly herself made no sound; it was as though her grief was trapped in a jar, her cries inaudible to anyone but her.”
Source: Life Support
“How far have we strayed from our essential natures. Just the sight of blood can make some men faint, and people scurry to hide such horrors from the public eye, hosing down sidewalks where blood has spilled, or covering children's eyes when violence erupts on the television. Humans have lost touch with who, and what, they really are.
Some of us, however, have not.
We walk among the rest, normal in every respect; perhaps we are more normal than anyone else because we have not allowed ourselves to be wrapped and mummified in civilization's sterile bandages. We see blood, and we do not turn away. We recognize its lustrous beauty; we feel its primitive pull.
Everyone who drives past an accident and cannot help but look for the blood understands this. Beneath the revulsion, the urge to turn away, throbs a greater force. Attraction.
We all want to look. But not all of us will admit it.”
Source: The Surgeon
“Some people make choices hoping for the best; Korsak had made a choice simply to avoid the worst.”
Source: The Apprentice
“It's yet another thing that irritates me this morning, on top of the fact that I'm hungry. I didn't sleep well, and now the mosquitos have found me. Mosquitos always find me. Whenever I step outside , it's as if they can hear their dinner bell ring, and already I am slapping at my neck and face.”
Source: Die Again
“Her technique was not perfect. Here and there he heard an off-pitch note, and her run of sixteenths was uneven. But her attack was fierce, her bow digging into the strings with such confidence that even her mistakes sounded intentional, every note played without apology.”
Source: Playing with Fire
“Ben may be a skeptic, but he's curious enough to be at my house Saturday afternoon when Maeve arrives along with her ghost-hunting team.
"This is Todd and Evan, who'll handle the technical aspects tonight," she says, introducing the two burly young men who are unloading camera gear from a white van. They are brothers with identical red beards and they look so much alike that I can only tell them apart by their different T-shirts. Evan's is Star Wars, Todd's is Alien. I'm surprised that neither is wearing Ghostbusters.
A VW comes up the driveway and parks behind the white van. "And that'll be Kim, our team sensitive," says Maeve. Out of the VW emerges a stick-thin blonde with cheeks so hollow that I wonder if she has recently suffered an illness. She takes a few steps toward us and suddenly stops, staring up at the house. She stands motionless for so long that Ben finally asks, "What's going on with her?"
"She's fine," says Maeve. "She's probably just trying to get a feeling for the place and detect any vibrations.”
Source: The Shape of Night
“The enemy was the microbial world, and over the centuries, it has killed more people than all of man's wars combined.”
Source: Gravity
“No matter how much you try to maintain order in your life, no matter how careful you are to guard against mistakes, against imperfections, there is always some smudge, some flaw, lurking out of sight. Waiting to surprise you.”
Source: The Surgeon
“The best heroes in the world are the reluctant ones. Courage isn't fearlessness - it's acting in the face of fear.”
Source: Secrets Uncovered: A Romantic Suspense Collection: Never Say Die\Kansas City Cover-Up\Infiltration
“The most dangerous enemy in the world is the one you do not recognize.”
Source: Call After Midnight
“When you're a fifty-year-old woman, no one really bothers to look at you anymore, much less value your opinion. It's hard on the old ego. But damn, it does make it easy to get away with a lot.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 9-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl
“Motherhood didn't make you stronger; it made you vulnerable and afraid of what death could steal from you.”
Source: The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
“Parenthood is nothing but doubts.”
“Medicine is probably one of the best backgrounds for a writer to find stories. I always think cops and docs have the best background because we see so much of human behavior, such a range of human emotions.”
“My childhood was spent in my local library in a San Diego suburb. It's where I became a writer - by 1st becoming a reader!”
“Only with maturity did I come to appreciate my own Chinese roots: not just the food and the ancient history, but also the philosophy of child-rearing and the respect for education and knowledge.”
“I was a writer first, and knew I'd be a storyteller at age seven. But since my parents are very practical, they urged me to go into a profession that would be far more secure so I went to medical school. But after practicing medicine for a few years, while raising two sons (with a husband who was also a doctor) I realized that combining medicine with motherhood was more of a challenge than I could handle. So I left medicine and stayed home. And that's when I once again picked up the pen and began to write.”
“I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.”
“If I were stranded on a desert island, the one book I would have with me would is the Bible. There are enough stories in the Bible to keep you engaged for years.”
“I know there’s evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don’t need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 9-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl
“The one man you most want to sleep with may be the worst choice of all.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“We are all descended from monsters.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“Evil doesn't die. It never dies. It just takes on a new face, a new name. Just because we've been touched by it once, it doesn't mean we're immune to ever being hurt again. Lightning can strike twice.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“Only the forgotten are truly dead.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“... he knew that the cruelest of blows too often came with a smile.”
“What Rizzoli thought, staring at her own image, was that she hated Elizabeth Hurley for giving women false hope. The brutal truth was, there are some women who will never be beautiful, and Rizzoli was one of them.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“She now knew her death was inevitable, and with that acceptance came liberation. The courage of the condemned.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“She was the only woman in the homicide unit, and already there had been problems between her and another detective, charges of sexual harassment, countercharges of unrelenting bitchiness.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“The heart makes its choices without weighing the consequences. It doesn't look ahead to the lonely nights that follow.”
Source: The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
“The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“Everything's a gamble, love most of all.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“With every year that I grow older, I also draw closer to (my loved ones) to the day when we will once again be together. So I march through the deepening shadows, serene and unafraid, because I know that at the end of my journey they will be waiting for me.”
“Ha! Kids! You have no idea what you put your parents through, either. Wait till you have your own, you'll see. That's when you'll know what it really feels like." .. "What what feels like?"..."Love," said Angela.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“We never know until the beast of opportunity is staring us in the face.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“Sometimes, the person who could make you happiest is the one who waits patiently in the wings.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“We are not as impervious as we think we are. - Dr Maura Isles”
“We dream our dreams, and sometimes they take us to places we never anticipate. But they are our dreams, and we go where they lead.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“No man easily admits that he is afraid.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“Where we go depends on what we know, and what we know depends on where we go.”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“That's what falling in love really amounted to, your brain on drugs. Adrenaline and dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. Chemical insanity, celebrated by poets.”
“There is honor between bitches”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“Sometimes, the stars line up, the gods smile, and love gets a fighting chance. Just a chance. That's all it can really hope for. No guarantees, no certainties”
Source: The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle: The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner, Body Double, Vanish, The Mephisto Club, The Keepsake, Ice Cold, The Silent Girl, Last to Die, Die Again
“The most intimate feeling people can share is neither love nor hate, but pain.”