Quotes from Laura Lippman

Vaccaro's was

Everyone wore masks these days, and they seldom slipped. The extreme was the reality-based television shows, where people created meta versions of themselves by trying to act in a way they thought was natural.

What makes a romance romantic, the beginning or the end?

Spoiled, she saw in retrospect, but does anyone ever realize they're spoiled until the spoiling ends?

The product might not be any better, but choosing to pay extra was a way of saying you deserved a little luxury in this world and that mind-set could make it so.

People today are always talking about prejudice and stuff, like the rest of us never knew it.

He has to know what she's saying is too good to be true. Good Lord, if this were the kindest way to break up with a woman, that would be the greatest thing that ever happened to men. Maybe she should write an advice book for men, one that tells them everything they want to hear, as opposed to all those books for women, which tell them to be the opposite of what they are, no matter what that is.

she had offered some B-movie about a snake, in which Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube emerge heroic, yet all their efforts center on helping the injured blond hero, just as Sigourney Weaver had battled aliens to save a similarly comatose white male.

Fenwick, sitting down to

The wheel spins, the ball bounces, bounces, bounces. Where will it land? Will you get the girl? Will your name be read from stages, the recipient of important prizes? Will your name be remembered? How will it be remembered? Will you be remembered at all? Everything is in the before moment. That's where life is richest, in that moment of possibility and anti- say it, the audience screamed at the screen - pation.

Whenever I got cross with him, I would think about that girl at the bus stop, how unhappy she was, how she thought no one could ever want to take her on a date, much less love her. It may sound silly, but I figured out that being happy made me happier than being unhappy ever did.

Of course women cared about stature, too, but they learned early to surrender any idea that life was a series of fair exchanges.

and a Dr. Brown's celery soda.

Yet soft, tactical lies, so-called white lies—is it okay to call them white or is that now racist?—are the social WD-40 of day-to-day life, greasing all the tiny connections, keeping things frictionless.

thought we could order in from the Ambassador. Oh, and I

She also was used to people who couldn't tell a story for anything, who thought the beginning went about as far back as Genesis, and that every tangential thought, every narrative cul de sac, must be explored en route.

Rear Window, popping

Nothing's worse than a bad person who thinks he's good.

Again, I have to ask: are you really missing if nobody misses you?

She asked only that life be tangible, full of things to touch and hold, smell and devour. Soft fabrics, new books, full-bodied wines, well-made dresses, defined calves.

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.

I'm at the age most people are sending their kids off to college.

The verbs that are used for people who write quickly are almost never flattering.

I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim. I like musicales in general. They make surprisingly great running tapes.