Lisa Lutz Quotes

Author Image

Lisa Lutz

Profession : Author

Birth : March 13, 1970

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

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

Lisa Lutz

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

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

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

I wouldn't say that my family is normal.

Lisa Lutz

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

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.

Lisa Lutz

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

Lisa Lutz

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

Lisa Lutz

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

Lisa Lutz

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

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

Lisa Lutz

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

Lisa Lutz

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

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.

Lisa Lutz

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

Lisa Lutz

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

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

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.

Lisa Lutz