Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Lisa Lutz

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.

I'm always accused of being a crime novelist, but I'm not really.

When I was 6, I learned where I came from, which was one step removed from the usual circumstances. I was adopted.

I wouldn't say that my family is normal.

If you're trying to hide, avoid using your own name. Have a couple spares that you can pull out of your pocket anytime, the more thoroughly documented the better.

I investigate more directly. I tend to ask a lot of questions and don't feel satisfied until I have the answer.

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

I worked for a private investigative agency briefly. I rarely had the opportunity to snoop.

'The Chosen,' if you recall, was based on the Chaim Potok novel and featured Robbie Benson's persuasive performance as a Hasidic Jew.

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

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.

I've got no business giving advice to anyone. Even a fictional character.

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

Humor is the only way to tell a story. Especially the dark ones.

I don't feel like I'm a writer who works under any influence.

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.

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.

There's no reason why a writer shouldn't explore and use different genres.

People transform in some ways, and they remain exactly the same in others. Often, the thing you'd like to change the most about yourself is where you will forever remain stuck.

Band I listen to most: The Ramones.

I have a love/hate relationship with jogging.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am a huge Mel Brooks fan. And I do think that not seeing his canon of classics is a bit criminal or clueless.

Six years after I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B,' I received my first paycheck as a writer. It included both the $3,000 in deferred option money as well as half the fee for performing the initial rewrite. The amount was scale according to the Writer's Guild guidelines, but a lot, according to me.

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.

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.

My writing process is chaos. I usually start with an overarching theme. Then I establish several story threads, but I don't outline. I just start writing and keep notes for what may come. It's an organic process that's usually pretty flexible.

I learned how to cross-country ski.

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.

The sense of not knowing where I came from let me be as smart as I wanted to be.

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.

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 loved writing the Spellman novels, but I never had any plan to only write in one genre.

I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B' the summer after I turned 21.

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.

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

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.

'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.

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.

Finally, I'm recognizing that rewrites aren't some cosmic punishment for childhood wrongs but the nature of the business.

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'.

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

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'.

Hair color is the easiest way to change your appearance, but a bad dye job might draw more attention to you.

I'm not a huge fan of research, but sometimes you get an idea, and then you realize you don't know anything.

I have certain rules for snooping, under which anything out in the open is fair game. But I also think, in light of some current trends in our culture, that privacy should be respected.

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.

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.

The latter. She had a good run, Sook said, doing a little shrug. It was his usual response to death at Mapleshade, and it was a safe bet that he felt that way about himself. Like most twice-widowed, Korea-vet, nature-loving, gun-enthusiast, bilingual, weed-connoisseur great grandfathers of five, he'd lived a full life.

I don't mind losing. Losing is like breathing to me.

I have a weakness for tough guys who read." - Izzy Spellman

I refuse to have a life partner who spends his days pretending to be on a BBC show.

Somebody is always hiding something.

But the most valuable lesson he taught me was this: Every day we get older, and some of us get wiser, but there's no end to our evolution. We are all a mess of contradictions; some of our traits work for us, some against us.

....You should keep dental floss on you at all times; when your eyesight goes, quit driving; don't keep too many secrets, eventually they'll eat away at you. But the most valuable lesson he taught me was this: Every day we get older, and some of us get wiser, but there's no end to our evolution. We are all a mess of contradictions; some of our traits work for us, some against us. And this is what I figured out on my own: Over the course of a lifetime, people change, but not as much as you'd think. Nobody really grows up.

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

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