Lisa Unger
I've always had this in a kind of worst-case dark imagination. I want to know what the dark form in the window is. I want to know what the noise under the staircase is.Collection: Imagination
I live for the blank page.
Maybe I have this fascination with the dark side because I live in the light. I don't have any dysfunction, and I've never experienced trauma.
If I weren't a writer, I'd be a psychiatrist.
I don't remember a time when I didn't define myself as a writer.
There's nothing particularly dark in my past... I live in the light. My disposition is basically happy. I have a good life.
I definitely feel that plot flows from character. I don't believe that you can construct a plot and insert people into it.
I don't think of my characters as people I create, I think of them more as people I have met and whom I'm exploring on the page. I don't actually think of myself as having 'created' any of these people.
I'm a 'bound book' kind of girl. I have a Kindle, and I enjoy it for some things, like convenience or instant gratification, or all the little things that you can do with them.
I love a big, character-rich story with a dark heart, with a compelling mystery or some kind of ticking clock at its center. I want to be lured in by prose, captured by character, and bound by stellar plotting to keep turning the pages.
I read 'Rebecca' when I was a teenager and was swept away by the powerful voice, the gut wrenching suspense and the dark, twisted love story at its center.
'In Cold Blood' is not a thriller at all, really. It is, however, the first work of its kind: a true crime book that reads like fiction.
Truman Capote was a magical, beautiful writer.
There's a village in my computer - friends, fans, readers, and colleagues. It's a populous, sometimes chaotic little burg always bustling with news, gossip, opinions and potential excitement.
The business of writing a novel is a long, meandering road into the self, into the imagination. And it's a road the writer travels alone.
I love the village in my computer. There's little validation in the day-to-day life of a writer; sometimes we ache for a connection.
Of course, like all organic processes, there is an ebb and a flow to writing. One does not exist without the other. The writer needs to be vigilant in protecting both, confident in the knowledge that the village will be there when we choose, finally, to open the door.
Publishing is a business of relationships. The relationships you make at one house can carry over to another.
The worst violence we can do to each other often is psychological, especially in families. I dwell a lot on domestic danger. That's the backdrop of most of my novels - what kind of damage is done without ever lifting a finger.
I was always the observer, trying to understand what was going on. I was always the new kid. Writing became my safe place.
I write for the same reason I read: to find out what's going to happen.
Everything is autobiographical, and nothing is autobiographical. That's fiction.
I can get my head turned by a good-looking guy as much as the next girl. But sexy doesn't impress me. Smart impresses me, strength of character impresses me. But most of all, I am impressed by kindness. Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks. When I see that in someone, it fills me with admiration.Collection: Strength
When you start to really know someone, all his physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in his energy, recognize the scent of his skin. You see only the essence of the person,not the shell. That's why you can't fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and body but not your heart. And that's why, when you really connect with a person's inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant.Collection: Love
When you love someone, it doesn't really matter if they love you back or not. Having love in your heart for someone is its own reward. or punishment, depending on the circumstances.Collection: Love You
How many people can you claim truly care about you? I mean, not just the people in your life who are fun to hang out with, not just the people who you love and trust. But people who feel good when you are happy and successful, feel bad when you are hurt or going through a hard time, people who would walk away from their lives for a little while to help you with yours?Collection: Hurt
Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.Collection: Believe
Writers are first and foremost observers. We lose ourselves in the watching and then the telling of the world we find. Often we feel on the fringes, in the margins of life. And that's where we belong. What you are a part of, you cannot observe.Collection: World
The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it.Collection: Secret
They don't find peace. It's pure bullshit. When something unspeakable happens, or when you do something unspeakable, it changes you. It takes you apart and reassembles you. You are a Frankenstein of circumstance, and the parts never fit back quite right and the life you live is a stolen one. You don't deserve to walk among the living, and you know it.Collection: Life
The truth has not so much set us free as it has ripped away a carefully constructed facade, leaving us naked to begin again.Collection: Leaving
People who stay in the same town with the same friends for their entire lives never get a chance to find out who they can really be, because they will always be considered as who they were.Collection: People
The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.Collection: Past
It was a strange lightness, a drifting feeling. Zero gravity. I understood that everything that once seemed solid and immovable might just float away. And that this was a truth of life, not an illusion in the grieving mind of a child. Everything that is hard and heavy in your world is made up of billions of molecules in constant motion offering the illusion of permanence. But it all tends toward breaking down and falling away. Some things just go more quickly, more surprisingly, than others.Collection: Zero
I think that's the moment when we all grow up, when we stop blaming our parents for the messes we've made out of our lives and start owning the consequences of our actions.Collection: Growing Up
I don't believe in mistakes. Never have. I believe that there are a multitude of paths before us and it's just a matter of which way we walk home. I don't believe in regret. If you regret things about your life, than I'll bet that you're not paying attention. Regret is just imagining that you know what would have happened if you took that job in California or married your high-school sweetheart or just looked one more time before you stepped out into the street ... or didn't. But you don't know; you can't possibly know.Collection: Jobs
It must be the ultimate punishment, don't you think, to finally gain wisdom, only to realize that the consequences of your actions are irrevocable?Collection: Thinking
A child who's been injured by a parent waits her whole life for some acknowledgment of the wrong that's been done, some validation from him that her pain is real, that he's sorry and will make amends. The child will wait forever, unable to move forward, unable to forgive, without someone to acknowledge the past. In that powerlessness comes a terrible rage.Collection: Children
You can cut the ties that bind but not without losing a part of yourself. You can walk away and hide from the people who made you, but you'll always hear them calling your name.Collection: Family
The universe conspires to reveal the truth and to make your path easy if you have the courage to follow the signs.Collection: Path
Everyone always talks about how well mothers know their children. No one ever seems to notice how well children know their mothers.Collection: Mother
Hope is good. Without it, well, you do the math. But hope has to be like a prayer. Putting it out there to something more powerful than yourself.Collection: Prayer
When you're young it's easy to confuse passion for love.Collection: Passion
We can't hold on to anyone or anything, you know. We lose everything except that which we carry within us.Collection: Loss
The worst violence we can do to each other often is psychological, especially in families. I dwell a lot on domestic danger. Thats the backdrop of most of my novels - what kind of damage is done without ever lifting a finger.Collection: Damage Is Done
Motherhood was an ever widening circle of good-byes.Collection: Motherhood
The woman I was seems hopelessly naive. I envy her.Collection: Envy
Today something interesting happened. I died.Collection: Interesting
Once you've started down that road to self-discovery, no matter how treacherous the path before you, you can't turn back. The universe doesn't allow it.Collection: Discovery
Isn't it funny how the people least impacted by tragedy are the most eager to move on?Collection: Moving