Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I've got no business giving advice to anyone. Even a fictional character. "
Lisa Lutz
Giving
Got
Business
Related Quotes:
" I could never really choose a favorite book, but whenever I'm asked what my favorite movie is, I always say 'Withnail & I,' a British film from 1987. It's funny and sad and absolutely gorgeous to look at. It's the film I can watch over and over again. "
Lisa Lutz
Look
Sad
Say
" I usually have a sense of where my characters are personally and ways in which they might transform throughout the novel. But I never know at the outset how the book will end, nor do I ever stick to my original plan. "
Lisa Lutz
Know
Plan
Book
" Although I'm not an orphan and I can't lift a horse. I was, however, briefly famous for my feats of strength: at about age 11, I could competitively arm-wrestle a full-grown man. "
Lisa Lutz
Horse
Strength
Man
" If I were one of the three viable presidential candidates, I doubt I'd be too broken up about someone looking into my passport file. Go ahead look, I'd say. It's the passport photo I wouldn't want anyone getting his hands on. "
Lisa Lutz
Hands
Say
Looking
" Hair color is the easiest way to change your appearance, but a bad dye job might draw more attention to you. "
Lisa Lutz
Appearance
Hair
Job
" The sense of not knowing where I came from let me be as smart as I wanted to be. "
Lisa Lutz
Sense
Smart
Me
" I've always adored the filmmaker Sam Fuller. The first time I watched 'Shock Corridor' was such a magnificent discovery. I love his lack of subtlety, the way he tackles serious topics with bold and inappropriate humor. "
Lisa Lutz
Bold
Time
Serious
" I love 'The Wire'. I can't think of a television show that I think is superior to it in any way. I was obsessed with it from the moment it came on the air. I do also love 'Doctor Who' and 'Get Smart'. "
Lisa Lutz
Think
Love
Moment
" To properly investigate a subject, we must investigate a subject's stuff. "
Lisa Lutz
Must
Investigate
Stuff
" 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. "
Lisa Lutz
Strong
Father
Happy
" 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. "
Lisa Lutz
Happy
Leave
Accidents
" I liked the idea of exposing the beams in collaborative novel. And there are many - especially in the crime world - there are many people working together: James Patterson and his stable of sub authors; and then there are like Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman and Jason Starr. "
Lisa Lutz
Like
Working Together
Together
" 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. "
Lisa Lutz
Brother
Defense
Her
" 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. "
Lisa Lutz
Furniture
Study
Medicine
" Band I listen to most: The Ramones. "
Lisa Lutz
Most
Band
Ramones
" I worked for a private investigative agency briefly. I rarely had the opportunity to snoop. "
Lisa Lutz
Opportunity
Had
Private
" For more than three months, I had been president and primary owner of Spellman Investigations, and I can say with complete certainty that I had more power in this office as an underling. My title, it seemed, was purely decorative. I was captain of an unfashionable and sinking ship. "
Lisa Lutz
Ship
Power
I Can
" I loved writing the Spellman novels, but I never had any plan to only write in one genre. "
Lisa Lutz
Plan
Loved
Write
" While I had no intention of ending the series after 'The Spellmans Strike Again,' I did close many doors in that book and, with the fifth one, I was opening a lot of doors and not finding anything behind them and then opening another door and another until I found something. It was a while before I found my stride. "
Lisa Lutz
Door
Ending
Finding
" Humor is the only way to tell a story. Especially the dark ones. "
Lisa Lutz
Story
Way
Only
" I'm always accused of being a crime novelist, but I'm not really. "
Lisa Lutz
Always
Really
Crime
" 'The Chosen,' if you recall, was based on the Chaim Potok novel and featured Robbie Benson's persuasive performance as a Hasidic Jew. "
Lisa Lutz
You
Performance
Chosen
" My mother, at sixty, is one of those classic beauties: all neck and cheekbones, sharp lines that hide her wrinkles from a distance. She still gets whistles from construction workers from three stories up. "
Lisa Lutz
Distance
Construction
Wrinkles
" Sometimes a single item can wrap up, in a nutshell, who a person is. In my grandparents' home, a clear plastic container was enthroned on top of the mahogany bar for at least a decade. Painted on the lid in pink, yellow and light blue was 'Have a Nosh With Mort & Ethel'. "
Lisa Lutz
Light
Home
Blue
" I have a love/hate relationship with jogging. "
Lisa Lutz
Relationship
Jogging
" 'Await Your Reply' by Dan Chaon. I've always been obsessed with the idea of disappearing and becoming someone else. Even if you don't share that obsession, I can't recommend this book highly enough. "
Lisa Lutz
Your
Enough
Someone
" I have certain rules for snooping, under which anything out in the open is fair game. "
Lisa Lutz
Fair
Rules
Game
" Finally, I'm recognizing that rewrites aren't some cosmic punishment for childhood wrongs but the nature of the business. "
Lisa Lutz
Childhood
Punishment
Nature
" There's no reason why a writer shouldn't explore and use different genres. "
Lisa Lutz
Reason
Writer
Explore
" I wrote my first screenplay on a lark, because it was a storytelling format that felt like a familiar shorthand - we all watch movies, don't we? But even though I grew up in Los Angeles, my family was entirely unconnected with the movie industry, and I never truly believed that it would one day be my fate. "
Lisa Lutz
Los Angeles
Day
Family