Quotes from Laura Lippman

When destiny wants to fuck with you, it can afford to be patient. Destiny has all the time in the world.

Kindness could be so much more painful than cruelty.

Kay came to realize that she preferred her books to other people's company. Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.

Allowing one's self to be forgiven is just as hard as forgiving. Harder in some ways. Because to be forgiven, one first has to admit to being at fault.

When it came down to it, Sandy didn't have much use for words because so many of the ones he had heard over his life had been lies.

It is one of the oddities of life in Maryland that no single supermarket can serve a household's entire needs.

She has no use for women, which is why she has to make sure to befriend them.

Cynics fooled themselves into thinking they had sussed out the worst-case scenarios and were invariably surprised by how life trumped them. Dreamers were often disappointed—but seldom in themselves.

Now Lu wonders if her father worried that moving up through the political ranks would cost him that adjective, beloved. Certainly, almost no politician is described that way anymore. Even the people who vote for you didn't seem to like you that much.

She was furious, with the kind of fury peculiar to the nonpaying client. Those who can't afford private attorneys . . . assumed legal aid was incompetent. Do-gooders were simply losers in disguise.

Coitus interruptus by SWAT team. At last a form of birth control that was one hundred percent reliable.

She had always thought of it as being rich, having so many books she has yet to read.

John Updike, in that book you gave me, he said the dead make space. Do you know what I think? Updike doesn't know dick about what it's like to be a homicide cop in Baltimore.

It turned out that the United States was a desperately lonely place, where everyone had been worrying that a single missed phone call might change one's destiny.

Family members must forgive one another.

In the Realm of the Senses for May? Or something by Peter Greenaway? You have to understand, to Lloyd, film is film, it's all about technique

Man, teachers and cops and their part-time jobs. We do the heavy lifting for society, and we still need OT gigs. Nothing ever changes, does it?" Willoughby

Is there anything sadder than losers telling themselves that they're fortunate?

SOME PEOPLE PANIC AT DECEMBER'S DARKNESS, DESPAIRING to see the sun go down before they leave work. But Tess had always found comfort in the shorter days. The winter months gave her permission to relax. It was pleasant, cozy even, to sit in her office and feel the shadows encroach around her and her computer screen. On this particular afternoon, the ebbing light was at least a sign of progress. The

Towns That Love Sports Too Much, and the Greedy Team Owners Who Use Them. "So please

How we treat our dead is central to our humanity.

The world kept telling her to look away, to pay no attention to an age-old system, in which men thrived and inconvenient women disappeared.

People make fun of love at first sight, but it's just good instincts.

She wonders if he is as exhausted by all the lying as she is.