Quotes from Lisa Lutz

I tend to start books with a very broad outline, but I always leave room for happy accidents. With 'The Passenger,' there were perhaps too many of those.

I was young, maybe 4, when I learned where babies came from.

We're all amateur investigators. We scan bookshelves, we ogle trinkets left out in the open, we calculate the cost of furniture and study the photographs on display; sometimes we even check out the medicine cabinet.

Stop looking at me like that." Sorry, I just wanted to savor the moment," Mom replied. What moment?" I asked. You're in first place," she said, and then began washing the windows.

While he bore no real resemblance to anyone in my family, his features were a collection of my mother's and father's best attributes, with a few of Gregory Peck's thrown in.

My father insisted that the boys in my life were directly responsible for my juvenile-delinquent tendencies. My mother, more accurately, assumed that I was the bad influence.

You're a terrible cook, Daniel." "I know," he replied, "But it's the effort that counts." "I hope that's not the slogan for your dental practice.

His sense of humor is purely cheap vaudeville, yet everyone falls for it.

I was on a few surveillance jobs as part of a big team. I would be the person to follow the subject on foot when the need arose. But most of the time, we were sitting in a car doing nothing.

I didn't feel a strong bond with the parents who raised me, and I had anything but a happy childhood. My mother was overly sensitive; my father, ascetic. I was neither. I felt as if I were living with complete strangers. I suspect that my parents felt the same way.

You can't be suspicious 24/7. It's too exhausting.

Years ago, when my attempts at a writing career came to a complete stand-still, I applied to the Los Angeles Police Department. This might seem odd for a liberal woman who once went to UC Santa Cruz, but I've always had a powerful fascination with crime and serious interest in finding different ways to contend with it.

I was never obsessed with being adopted. I was simply curious about my biological parents.

I'd like to think that if I were in prison for a crime I didn't commit, someone would be trying to get me the hell out of there.

Maggie is my sister-in-law, married to my brother David. She is a defense attorney who devotes 25 percent of her practice to pro bono wrongful-incarceration cases.

I have certain rules for snooping, under which anything out in the open is fair game.

To properly investigate a subject, we must investigate a subject's stuff.

Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn't quite as spectacular.

I have a weakness for tough guys who read.

If people really grew up, there would be no crime, no divorce, no Civil War reenactors....it's not like you think it will be, that one day you'll wake up and realize that you've got things figured out. You never figure it out. Ever. - Isabel Spellman attempting to explain growing up to her sister Rae

My father insisted that the boys in my life were directly responsible for my juvenile-delinquent tendencies. My mother, more accurately, assumed that I was the bad influence.

What's her name? None of your business. That can't possibly be her name.

I'm staying, Henry said, annoyed. Why? Because, if I leave, it would be like abandoning two mentally challenged people in a nuclear waste dump.

I entered his apartment without being invited, which is perfectly fine if you're not a vampire.