Tess Gerritsen Quotations

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.

The hardest part of writing is the first draft, and the closer you get to your deadline, the messier your workspace becomes - but that's the same with any creative outlet.

There is no better test of character than when you're tossed into crisis. That's when we see one's true colors shine through. So I try my best to make my characters personally involved in the plot, in a way that stresses them and tests them.

I met my husband, Jacob, in medical school. We married and went to live in Hawaii where his family lived. It was very beautiful, but I wasn't used to being on an island and needed wide open spaces. Eventually we moved to Maine, New England.

My father said writing was a nice hobby. He strongly encouraged my brother and me to become doctors.

My brother often complains to me about the 'angry Asian male' in the United States. As a female, I haven't encountered this, but Asian-American men are angry. They're angry because, for so many years, they've been neglected as sex symbols. Asian women have it much easier, I think; we're accepted into various circles.

I think that, for physicians who want to become writers, they have the material, the smarts, they have the logic, they know the stories; it's just a matter of being able to connect with their emotional sides - that's the key to writing good fiction.

Throughout most of my life, I've tried to downplay my Chinese heritage because I wanted so much to be an American. I was the only Asian kid in my elementary school, and I longed to be like everyone else. I insisted on American food; I was embarrassed by my mother's poor English.

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 think of myself as a fairly logical, scientific and somewhat reserved person. Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner who appears in five of my books, is me. Almost everything I use in describing her, from her taste in wine to her biographical data, is taken from my own family. Except I don't have a serial killer as a mother!

I have minor characters who are Asian-American, and I've been using them throughout my career, but they've never taken center stage, they've never been really powerful, they've never expressed some of the experiences I had growing up in the U.S. Johnny Tam is the first one.

Alzheimer's is literally killing us, and the only way to fight this 'crime' is through a groundswell of people who continue to raise their voices and funds to ensure it gets the attention it deserves.

'I am a bad mother.' Every Christmas, this is what I think because the holiday season fills me with such anxiety. I'm sure that other mothers are happily baking cookies, decorating trees, and finding perfect gifts for everyone.

'Ice Cold' is the eighth in my 'Rizzoli and Isles' thriller series. It was inspired by a true occurrence in the 1960s, now known as the 'Dugway Incident,' in which 6,000 sheep mysteriously died overnight in a remote area of Utah. I thought, 'What if it happened instead to people? What if the inhabitants of an entire village vanished overnight?'

I think fiction, for me, is a way of trying to understand why people do the things they do - and trying to explain what is, at heart, illogical.

I organise jam sessions every month. We have an open session, so everyone knows about it, and we can get as many as 30 people showing up at the house. Somebody will play a tune, and everyone will pick up on it. My best friends are all musicians.

My mother is an immigrant from China, and she filled my head with stories about ghosts and fighting monks in China, so the world of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' was a very familiar one.

Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer.

Because my dad's Chinese-American, and they're very concrete, he said, 'There's no money to be made in literature.' So he told me to go into the sciences. And I was a good girl. And I did what Daddy said. And that's how I ended up being a doctor. But you know, you just can't stamp out that desire to tell stories.

I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could.

In 'Last to Die,' three children living in different cities are the only survivors when their families are slaughtered. Two years later, their foster families are murdered, and these three orphans are once again the only survivors.

My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me.

The hunting of monsters is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who feel bound by such trivial doctrines as law or national borders.

For years I've wanted to write a book about mummies, and had been following the science of mummy CT scans when the premise for 'The Keepsake' occurred to me: what if an 'ancient' mummy turns out to have a bullet in its leg? How does a modern murder victim get turned into a mummy?

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.

After twelve years of living in Hawaii, I'd gotten a serious case of 'rock fever.' I just couldn't live on an island any longer.

Writing is hard for me, ... every critic and reader in the world is looking over my shoulder and shaking their heads about how bad that last sentence turned out.

Since my romance novels had all been thrillers as well, it wasn't such a leap for me to move into the straight thriller genre. The most difficult part, I think, was being accepted as a thriller writer. Once you've written romance, unfortunately, critics will never stop calling you a 'former romance author.'

Mom and I often talked about the trip we'd someday take together to the 'city of eternal spring' where she was born. In Kunming, she said, the fruits are sweeter, the mountains look like Chinese paintings, and the weather is always perfect.

One of the best Christmas presents I ever got was the globe that I now keep right beside my desk.

My dad's cooking was magic in the kitchen. But eventually over the years, his personality changed and his ability to remember recipes failed. He became paranoid and thought people were stealing from him, when often he was just misplacing things.

My father said writing was a nice hobby, ... Not something you could make money at.

My father was second-generation Chinese-American, born in 1923 in California. My mother emigrated to the States from China when she was in her early twenties, in part to escape the political turmoil in China.

I have hidden my race for 22 books. I have hidden behind my married name, which is very Caucasian, because I didn't feel safe coming out with it. I didn't feel that the market would really accept me. I think I felt it's time to start bringing in an Asian-American point of view.

I'd been writing stories since I was a child. I wrote little books for my mom and bound them myself with needle and thread. Mostly, they were about my pets.

Id always written, Id been writing stories since I was a child,

I was an anthropology major in college, and I've had a lifelong fascination with Egyptology, mummies, and all sorts of bizarre cultural practices.

I think what medical training does is it gives you the language, the tools to look up facts. I think medical training gives you a sense of how to approach a problem, how to look at symptoms and go down the list of what it might be.

I was always meant to be a writer. I've felt that way since I was a child.

My most successful books, the ones that I feel the strongest about, are the ones that started with a premise that for me was deeply emotional.

'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry and 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think that says a lot about an author's writing.

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.

My brother and I spent our childhood in movie theaters screaming. I decided early on that that was the epitome of entertainment. I'm always trying for that same level of adrenaline in my books.

Writing is very much an emotional process; it requires you to be very in touch with your feelings. That is the opposite of what you're taught as a medical doctor. We're supposed to be detached and logical. Maybe because I started off as a writer and then became a doctor, I'm able to integrate those two.

Fans are always asking me where I get my ideas from. The answer is that I'm very curious, and I get inspiration from everywhere. I read the newspapers voraciously, so I know what's going on in real crime. I pay attention to the strange stories people tell me, and I also read a lot of scientific and forensic journals.

While the TV show 'Rizzoli & Isles' may have been inspired by my books, show runner Janet Tamaro has total control over where the TV characters go from there. As Janet once put it, I'm the birth mother, but she's the mother who adopted them, and now that Jane and Maura are living in her house, they have to do what she tells them to do.

Aside from the Rizzoli & Isles books, there are many other stories I want to write. The question is whether I'll live long enough to write them all!

Even if I never sold another book, I'd keep writing, because the stories are here, in my head. Stories that just need to be told. I love watching a plot unfold, and feeling the surprise when the unexpected happens.

I sold my first short story while I was home on maternity leave, then began working on novels. Since I was reading and enjoying romance novels at the time, the first two unpublished manuscripts I wrote were both romances. I sold my third novel, 'Call After Midnight,' to Harlequin Intrigue after submitting it unagented.

I spent my childhood watching every scary movie that Hollywood ever made. And I think that gave me the best education for storytelling. It also made me want to reproduce the scary moments that I felt, sitting in a theater at the age of 5.

Isles love life is stalled right now, ... But I think the priest is coming back.

I shy away from showing cruelty on the page. A lot of the violence in my books actually happens off stage. The police come on to the scene after the event has occurred.

A project like 'Rizzoli & Isles' is something you can't pursue. It's something that comes to you... I like to call it 'fairy dust.' And it happened without my having to do anything.

The best ideas are those that really affect me emotionally - those are the ones you never forget. You think to yourself, 'I want to write that book', for years; those are the ideas that I love to work with, and 'The Bone Garden' was one of them.

It's what all writers dream of, that our work finds a measure of immortality that long outlives the words of any critic.

In China, the dead are not forgotten - my relatives cheerfully pointed out all the niches of deceased friends and family, as if gesturing at the homes of the living.

I'm trained in science, believe in logic, and like to think there's an explanation for everything. And I'm truly not really at ease with other people.

I raised two sons, and I know that even though they're bigger and stronger than I am, they're still little boys inside. They still cry, they still hurt. So whenever I write a male character, no matter how 'heroic' he may be, I think of my sons. And I remember that every man was once a little boy.

I think of all media, television is the most powerful when it comes to selling books, because when you have a feature film, yeah, there's a rush. But then after that month is over and the movie goes out of release, that's it.

I always write on unlined typing paper and write the first draft in longhand, using cheap Bic pens. I try to write about four pages a day, which usually yields a first draft in six months. I don't plot ahead of time, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants for the first draft.

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.

Motherhood didn't make you stronger; it made you vulnerable and afraid of what death could steal from you.

The best heroes in the world are the reluctant ones. Courage isn't fearlessness - it's acting in the face of fear.

The most dangerous enemy in the world is the one you do not recognize.

The heart makes its choices without weighing the consequences. It doesn't look ahead to the lonely nights that follow.

Everything's a gamble, love most of all.

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.

The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.

We never know until the beast of opportunity is staring us in the face.

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.

She now knew her death was inevitable, and with that acceptance came liberation. The courage of the condemned.

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.

... he knew that the cruelest of blows too often came with a smile.

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.

We are all descended from monsters.

The one man you most want to sleep with may be the worst choice of all.

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.

Sometimes, the person who could make you happiest is the one who waits patiently in the wings.

We are not as impervious as we think we are. - Dr Maura Isles

Parenthood is nothing but doubts.

Death does not discriminate; whether saints or sinners, in the end, all are equal.

God, it's like reality's completely shifted on me. I used to think I was standing on such solid ground. If I wanted something badly enough, I just worked like hell for it. Now I can't decide what to do, which move to make. All the things I counted on aren't there for me anymore.

You don't have to die to go to hell.

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

If you want to remain at liberty, I suggest you not antagonize your defenders.

There is honor between bitches

That's what falling in love really amounted to, your brain on drugs. Adrenaline and dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. Chemical insanity, celebrated by poets.

Where we go depends on what we know, and what we know depends on where we go.

No man easily admits that he is afraid.

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.

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!

The most intimate feeling people can share is neither love nor hate, but pain.

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.

Only the forgotten are truly dead.

The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.