Laura Lippman famous quotes

05-15-2025

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

#Real #Book #Serendipity
Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.
-- Laura Lippman

#Reading #Healing #Teens
We become comfortable saying that there's nothing new, and then something like Malarky comes along, which is new and old and different and familiar, but ultimately itself, comfortable in its own skin, wise and smart and crazy-sexy or maybe sexy-crazy-well, you just have to read it to understand. It's a novel that sets its own course, sure and steady, even when it seems like it might be about to go over the edge of the world.
-- Laura Lippman

#Wise #Smart #Skins
it's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart.
-- Laura Lippman

#Smart #Luck #Lucky
...Baltimore. It's imperfect. Boy, is it imperfect. And there are parts of its past that make you wince. It's not all marble steps and waitresses calling you 'hon,' you know. Racial strife in the sixties, the riots during the Civil War. F. Scott Fitzgerald said it was civilized and gay, rotted and polite. The terms are slightly anachronistic now, but I think he was essentially right.
-- Laura Lippman

#War #Gay #Thinking
how magnanimous was a gesture if one were constantly aware of its magnanimity?
-- Laura Lippman

#Gestures #Magnanimity
Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child.
-- Laura Lippman

#Children #Parent #Miserable
stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.
-- Laura Lippman

#Selfishness #Size #Stinginess
There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions.
-- Laura Lippman

#People #Good Intentions #Dangerous
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

#Thinking #Generations #Facts
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

#Writing #Ignorance #Thinking
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

#Past #Knowing #Foundation
It's very different to have this kid that I'm truly responsible for.
-- Laura Lippman

#Kids #Different #Responsible
I've gotten to do a lot of stuff, traveled, worked hard at my career.
-- Laura Lippman

#Careers #Stuff
There are, of course, an infinite number of places where one is not, yet only one place where one actually is.
-- Laura Lippman

#Numbers #Infinite
But you were a goody-goody, you said.' 'Even goody-goodies think about such things. In fact, I would say that's what defines us. We're always thinking about the things we don't dare do, figuring out where the lines are drawn, so we can go right up to the edge of things, then plead innocence on the ground of a technicality.
-- Laura Lippman

#Thinking #Lines #Facts
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 with a license to carry, and a girl could more than get by in this life.
-- Laura Lippman

#Girl #Strong #Smart
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

#Eating #Cooks
Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.
-- Laura Lippman

#Want #Longing #Moments
It must be nice to be so strong and to think it's because you're so good, that you live right and eat right, so you deserve your health and happiness. But there is such a thing as luck, and there's more bad luck than good in this world.
-- Laura Lippman

#Strong #Nice #Thinking
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

#Children #Math #Odds
Anyone can love a perfect place. Loving Baltimore takes some resilience.
-- Laura Lippman

#Perfect #Resilience #Baltimore
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

#Thinking #Talking #Cities
I'm at the age most people are sending their kids off to college.
-- Laura Lippman

#Kids #College #People

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