Laura Lippman
I've long believed that the work-out life has lessons for the writing life. I've 'solved' a lot of books while at the gym, in part because I'm not trying to solve them at that precise moment.
I'm very empathetic - that might be one of my superpowers.
My husband, David Simon, and I make our livings using our imaginations.
For me, crime fiction was an opportunity to sneak up on readers with social issues, something they won't go out of their way to seek.
Every person you meet has a story.
Anyone can love a perfect place. Loving Baltimore takes some resilience.
It's very different to have this kid that I'm truly responsible for.
I've gotten to do a lot of stuff, traveled, worked hard at my career.
I'm at the age most people are sending their kids off to college.
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.
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.
My reading life is like an airport where a bunch of planes circle in a holding pattern, then - boom, boom, boom - several come in for a landing.
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.
Edward Eager wrote a series of children's books that are in danger of being forgotten. But they're divine: stories about ordinary kids who stumble on magical things - a coin, a lake, a book, a thyme garden, a well. The magic changes them, they try to change the magic, the magic moves on.
I like books steeped in the quotidian - details about work and place. You can learn how to run a chicken-and-waffle restaurant by reading 'Mildred Pierce.' And I like fiction about money.
People still struggle with this notion of gifted writers somehow being in touch with a higher power, but it's all about showing up and doing the job, meeting deadlines, working hard.
My husband and I are both proud public school graduates.
I spent grades one through nine in Baltimore City, leaving for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of education I was receiving.
Baltimore has been a punchline/punching bag for years - I've landed a few blows, to be fair - but those old jokes are out of touch.
Writing is a sedentary gig unless one has a treadmill desk. But I have long believed writing and working out are complementary disciplines.
If I waited to be inspired to go to the gym, I'd never get there. I schedule my exercise time; I schedule my work time. This is especially important if you have a day job as I did while writing my first seven novels.
Writers who don't read can't write well. It's that simple. The more you read, the better you read, the better you'll write. The upside is that you can't read too much, and even 'junk' reading can be constructive.
I never knew how passive-aggressive people could be until I became a parent. Or even aggressive-aggressive. It actually began before I had a child. A relative asked me out to lunch and told me I was too old for motherhood.
The verbs that are used for people who write quickly are almost never flattering.
I sometimes allow people to infer that I'm much less successful than I am.
After I started writing crime fiction, I said to myself, 'I may be limited, but the genre's not. There's no reason to change genres if I'm happy writing what I write.' And I am.
It doesn't feel like work. Yes, I have days that are difficult, but I'm sitting in a chair making up stories. It's what I did for fun as a kid, whether with Barbies or stuffed animals.
Fiction needs writers and readers, and writers should cultivate both.
I don't know where my phone is half the time.
I was part of a generation where kids had a lot of freedom and aimless downtime. I had no scheduled after-school activities. As long as you came home for dinner, everything was fine.
I love crime fiction, and I'm proud to be part of it, but I'm not without criticism for my own genre.
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.Collection: Real
There was nothing more dangerous than people convinced of their own good intentions.Collection: People
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.Collection: Eye
Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Eating
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.Collection: Past
In fact, I think every book I've written has been inspired by a real event.Collection: Real
Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.Collection: Reading
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Ignorance
I carry in my datebook a piece of paper that my mother copied out for me, from the 1840 Census. Hardy Callaway Culver of Hancock County, Georgia, had 42 slaves, 31 "employed in agriculture." Culver was my great-great-great grandfather. I carry this piece of paper with me every day because I don't want to forget. I don't know what to do with the information, but I don't want to forget it.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Strong
I'm a morning person, which is a hideous thing to be. No one likes morning people, not even other morning people.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Girl
There are, of course, an infinite number of places where one is not, yet only one place where one actually is.Collection: Numbers
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.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Children
I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim. I like musicales in general. They make surprisingly great running tapes.Collection: Running
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.Collection: New York