In my newspaper days, your endings could be literally sliced off in the composing room, so it was dangerous to get attached to them. Yet I think this has made me work harder on endings in fiction. Laura Lippman More Quotes by Laura Lippman More Quotes From Laura Lippman Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being. Laura Lippman teensreadinghealing There's a serendipity to real life that the Internet can't duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well, sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for, and it's that book that changes your life. Laura Lippman serendipityrealbook Anyone can love a perfect place. Loving Baltimore takes some resilience. Laura Lippman baltimoreresilienceperfect I'm a morning person, which is a hideous thing to be. No one likes morning people, not even other morning people. Laura Lippman likesmorningpeople There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions. Laura Lippman good-intentionsdangerouspeople The past was worth remembering and knowing in its own right. It was not behind us, never truly behind us, but under us, holding us up, a foundation for all that was to come and everything that had ever been. Laura Lippman foundationknowingpast The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, as it should be, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's wily, talented and-rarest of the rare-a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either. I am always eager to see what he's going to do next. Laura Lippman mcdonaldseyewriting Reporting is pretty vital to me. It keeps me connected to the world. A 40-hour-per-week day job may be less feasible as time goes on. Laura Lippman goes-onjobsworld She might not be as strong as everyone she met, or as fast, or even as smart. But she could bullshit with the best of them. Combine that quality with a license to carry, and a girl could more than get by in this life. Laura Lippman smartgirlstrong There are, of course, an infinite number of places where one is not, yet only one place where one actually is. Laura Lippman coursesinfinitenumbers There's always time to read. Don't trust a writer who doesn't read. It's like eating food prepared by a cook who doesn't eat. Laura Lippman dont-trustcookseating I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not. Laura Lippman new-yorkattitudepast Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child. Laura Lippman miserableparentchildren I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre. Laura Lippman generationsfactsthinking I think Baltimore suffers from nostalgia and it keeps us from being honest in talking about what really happened here. A place doesn't have to be perfect to be beloved, and I love this city and I love it better for seeing its flaws. Laura Lippman citiestalkingthinking My family is really, really Southern - I had two uncle Bubbas, and grandparents that we called Big Mama and Big Daddy. Laura Lippman daddyunclestwo I'm at the age most people are sending their kids off to college. Laura Lippman collegekidspeople Would-be novelists need to bring equal parts arrogance and ignorance to the task before them. The arrogance is almost self-explanatory. Walk into any bookstore or library, calculate how many lifetimes the average person would need to read all the fiction contained therein. To think that one has anything to contribute, to any genre or tradition, takes genuine hubris. Laura Lippman ignorancewritingthinking There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter how many times one has flipped the coin and gotten heads. Every flip, the odds are the same. Every day, you could be unlucky all over again. Laura Lippman oddsmathchildren I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim. I like musicales in general. They make surprisingly great running tapes. Laura Lippman tapeadorerunning
