Lippman Kanfer Quotes

Sometimes you have to destroy things, even people, in order to save them. (7) ~ Laura Lippman

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. ~ Laura Lippman

But she was Barbara Monroe, of Chicago, Illinois. She had attended a big-city high school, Mather. A big school in a big city was easier to fake than a small one, because anyone could be forgotten in a big school. ~ Laura Lippman

We become comfortable saying that there's nothing new, and then something like Malarky comes along, which is new and old and different and familiar, but ultimately itself, comfortable in its own skin, wise and smart and crazy-sexy or maybe sexy-crazy-well, you just have to read it to understand. It's a novel that sets its own course, sure and steady, even when it seems like it might be about to go over the edge of the world. ~ Laura Lippman

It must be nice to be so strong and to think it's because you're so good, that you live right and eat right, so you deserve your health and happiness. But there is such a thing as luck, and there's more bad luck than good in this world. ~ Laura Lippman

I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not. ~ Laura Lippman

Besides, what is the whole truth and nothing but the truth? The truth is not a finite commodity that can be contained within identifiable borders. The truth is messy, riotous, overrunning everything. You can never know the whole truth of anything. And if you could, you would wish you didn't. ~ Laura Lippman

The thing people are never indifferent to are differences. ~ Laura Lippman

The problem was that such simple, ordinary bliss seldom formed memories. It was too smooth and silken to adhere. It was the bad stuff, ragged and uneven, that caught, like all those plastic grocery bags stuck in the trees of Baltimore. ~ Laura Lippman

Listen, you know? Girls. They don't listen. They're in too much ~ Laura Lippman

How we treat our dead is central to our humanity. ~ Laura Lippman

What was the point of giving children freedom to experiment and fail, if one then turned it all into a tiresome object lesson? ~ Laura Lippman

The main reason we learn any habit, as Drs. Frederick Kanfer and Jeanne Phillips tell us in Learning Foundations of Behavior Therapy, is that even a seemingly counterproductive habit like procrastination is immediately followed by some reward. Procrastination reduces tension by taking us away from something we view as painful or threatening. The more painful work is for you, the more you will try to seek relief through avoidance or through involvement in more pleasurable activities. The more you feel that endless work deprives you of the pleasure of leisure time, the more you will avoid work. ~ Neil A. Fiore

To be an "American," as [citizens] of the United States so blithely called themselves, as if no other country in the hemisphere existed ~ Laura Lippman

It's a special art, asking people to do things, yet making it seem as if you never asked at all. ~ Laura Lippman

How magnanimous was a gesture if one were constantly aware of its magnanimity? ~ Laura Lippman

As for music, my tastes are eclectic. Elvis Costello is my all-time favorite. I listen to a lot of jazz, primarily the great female vocalists, and I am very fond of the late cabaret singer Nancy Lamott. ~ Laura Lippman

I think Baltimore suffers from nostalgia and it keeps us from being honest in talking about what really happened here. A place doesn't have to be perfect to be beloved, and I love this city and I love it better for seeing its flaws. ~ Laura Lippman

It's what's in the book that matters. Standing in her daughter's room which also had shelves and shelves filled with books, Tess remembered a character in a favorite story saying that to someone who objected to using the Bible as a fan on a hot summer day. But she could no longer remember which story it was.
Did that mean the book had ceased to live for her? The title she was trying to recall could be in this very room, along with all of Tess's childhood favorites, waiting for Carla Scout to discover them one day. But what if she rejected them all, insisting on her own myths and legends, as Octavia has prophesied? How many of these books would be out of print in five, ten years? What did it mean to be out of print in a world where books could live inside devices, glowing like captured genies, desperate to get back out in the world and grant people's wishes? ~ Laura Lippman

The young woman at his side surveyed Tess in one quick, lethal glance. Tess could almost hear her brain clicking away on the sort of points system that some women used: Taller - 1 point for her. Hippy - 1 point against. Big breasts, long hair - 2 points for. Hair, unstyled, worn in a braid down her back - 2 points against. Older than me - 3 points against. Face, okay. Clothes, not stylish, not embarrassing. Tess wasn't sure of her final score, but apparently it was just a little too high. The woman gave her a terrifyingly fake smile, one that suggested she had little experience with real ones, and held out her hand. ~ Laura Lippman

I begin each book with a challenge to myself. ~ Laura Lippman

Her dilemma - the eternal human dilemma - is that she wants a chance to revisit her choices with full knowledge of the future. ~ Laura Lippman

Being a mother was like being trapped in the first fifteen minutes of a horror film. Everything was fine, lovely. But there was this persistent sense of dread. ~ Laura Lippman

Bad taste never dies. It just keeps evolving. ~ Laura Lippman

Things have happened - so fast. Ten days ago, we didn't even know Rudy was sleeping rough again." "Isn't that a British term?" "It is." Mrs. Drysdale is allowed to speak to this at least. "But Rudy liked it. He said it was more like the way he lived. He wasn't homeless. Our door was always open to him. Always. ~ Laura Lippman

Stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing. ~ Laura Lippman

My family is really, really Southern - I had two uncle Bubbas, and grandparents that we called Big Mama and Big Daddy. ~ Laura Lippman

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

There's always time to read. Don't trust a writer who doesn't read. It's like eating food prepared by a cook who doesn't eat. ~ Laura Lippman

Doing nothing," Inez said, "is a choice in its own way. When you do nothing, you still do something. ~ Laura Lippman

Heloise long ago reconciled herself to the idea that all is fair in love and war, which is just another way of saying that nothing in life is ever fair, because life is love and war. ~ Laura Lippman

It was as if his fingers knew things, but they couldn't show him unless they were moving, touching. He had to think it was similar for carpenters and writers, and he knew it was the same for chefs. ~ Laura Lippman

Baltimore. It's imperfect. Boy, is it imperfect. And there are parts of its past that make you wince. It's not all marble steps and waitresses calling you 'hon,' you know. Racial strife in the sixties, the riots during the Civil War. F. Scott Fitzgerald said it was civilized and gay, rotted and polite. The terms are slightly anachronistic now, but I think he was essentially right. ~ Laura Lippman

Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for. ~ Laura Lippman

Everyone cared what others thought, even those who were defiantly different. They cared more than anyone. ~ Laura Lippman