Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A crime writer whose graphic, forensically accurate stories made her a millionaire; creator of pathologist Kay Scarpetta and author of non-fiction linking Walte
On the island
Eight records
Every hundred years or so, there's someone who is born. There is no one else like him or her. They're just they rise above what is normal. And certainly that is true of Elvis.
I started out on a path in life that I never knew would exist and never knew what it held for me. And it's not been without injury. It is like walking on broken glass because you can't see what I've seen and walk away without wounds.
When I used to drive to her house when I was working on the biography, I was always listening to ABBA and I loved the song SOS and I just associate it so much with those long drives to her mountain.
I love share. I think she's got the most fabulous voice. I just absolutely adore her voice. And Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, it kind of describes my police beat because, boom, there I was thrown into all that.
I've suffered some losses from bad love affairs. I got divorced and that was, you know, very painful because when I got married, you know, I thought it would last forever.
I rocketed to success and it ended in a crash. And now I think I'm flying, as we say, in helicopter aviation. I'm flying straight and level.
You know, it's I find Enya very soothing. She relaxes me in a way that is really wonderful because there isn't much I do in life that soothes me.
Canon in DFavourite
Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra
I feel I am so overwhelmed when I hear that piece of music. I associate it with many things in my life. It's sort of like the melancholy poetry that runs beneath the, you know, the surface of this world I live in.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:15How do [the dead] speak to you? Describe it.
Well, they speak in many ways. They have much more of a language than your average person would ever know. They speak through their clothing. They speak through the hieroglyphics of their injuries and the evidence that's left on the bodies. And what's so important about the medical examiner's office or the morgue is this is the last place anybody goes and you want them to have a chance to say what happened to them, not only how they died, but how they lived their lives. And somebody should listen.
Presenter asks
1:59Was the first dead body you ever saw on that slab in the [morgue], do you remember?
Yes, I do very vividly. It was an elderly woman, and I literally bumped into her gurney as I was coming through the door. The reason she was there is it was unattended death. So she was the natural causes, and I'm glad because I wasn't exposed to violence on the first one. But I had to teach myself to look at it through the eyes of the doctors, to be clinical, and to watch them make the dead speak and not simply look at the gore of it, or I'm not sure I would have made it then or ever.
Presenter asks
4:46When did you realize, Patricia Cornwell, that this stuff you were dealing in, this grisly, gruesome morgue material, was ideal for fiction writing?
The keepsakes
The book
An Essay on the Principle of Population
Thomas Malthus
it's so full of wisdom about people and human nature and basically what's gone wrong and why we have poverty. But what I love the most about that book, while that man I can see him sitting at a desk writing with his quill pen, he says, Oh, he said this is I must stop for a moment because I have a dreadful toothache. And suddenly he was real writing this book, and it is a treasure to me.
The luxury
an endless supply of notebooks and pens
It wouldn't get me off the island, but if I couldn't write, I don't know what I would do.
The very first time I went to the morgue to interview a medical examiner who fortunately was a woman. Never occurred to me a woman would be in this profession. And the minute I sat down with her, all the morbidity of it completely drifted away. She began to explain what she saw, and she talked about lasers and DNA, which was just coming into vogue at that time. And I thought, this fits in with basically solving crimes with your mind. And I said, that fits me better.
Presenter asks
8:37Tell me [about the experience of your father leaving].
Yes, the most powerless experience I ever had, which changed me forever, was Christmas Day of 1961 when I was five, and I could hear the heavy steps of my father. And when he turned into the living room, he was holding a suitcase. And I knew immediately what was happening. And as he headed towards the door, I ran after him and I grabbed him around the leg, just like a tree frog, just wrapped around his leg. And I was screaming, Daddy, don't leave, Daddy, don't leave. And he just kind of shook me off and went out the door. And, you know, I feel in a way my psyche and my spirit went out that door with him and went on a different direction because of it. I never went home again because home was a painful place.
Presenter asks
31:18Did [your father] ever acknowledge your success or have you told him of his failure?
You know, he he died about five years ago and he acknowledged my success, but not in a very good way. It was mostly bragging about me to other people when he'd never had anything to do with my life until I became successful. Sometimes I go to counseling like half the world, like therapy, because I never felt my father was proud of me and I always wanted him to be. So and you know, that's one reason that sometimes all this criticism deeply pains me because, you know, I want people to like me and be proud of me and it hurts, but I go on anyway.
“I consider myself a crime writer who uses her pen and not a gun or not even a scalpel because the strongest, you know, the fire that burns inside of me is to do something about abuse of power against all creatures, great and small, because that is the root of all sin and the ultimate abuse of power is murder.”
“You have to have objectivity, but you've got to make it moving. You have to have the objectivity of describing some of the worst of the worst, but not leave the humanity out of it, at least for me.”
“Fame is imposed by the outside and I don't have to let it become me.”