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

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.

Only the forgotten are truly dead.

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.

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.

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