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Never underestimate a man's ability to underestimate a woman.
Sara Paretsky -
The rich are different than you and me: they have more money and they have more power.
Sara Paretsky
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When you feel lousy, puppy therapy is indicated.
Sara Paretsky -
I had wanted to write Ghost Country for a long time, but it wouldn't work.
Sara Paretsky -
Rule number something or other -- never tell anybody anything unless you're going to get something better in return.
Sara Paretsky -
Around the time I turned 30, I wanted to publish a novel
Sara Paretsky -
Capo, my first golden retriever, so loved to swim she once jumped off a cliff to get into Lake Superior.
Sara Paretsky -
My parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.
Sara Paretsky
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I wish I could remember where I put things. I spend half my life looking for my keys. With the other half I look for my glasses.
Sara Paretsky -
Don't tell me I have latent sexism or racism that I need to confront. I don't believe that. I think we are so burned by the current situation that we want somebody that it isn't possible to have. We want someone who definitely looks like the messiah.
Sara Paretsky -
I realised I'd never climb Everest but thought I could still write a book
Sara Paretsky -
Nothing kinder than strangers. Nothing stranger than kindness.
Sara Paretsky -
The best source for finding an agent is called Literary Agents of North America. It's a complete list of agents, not only by name and address, but by type of book they represent and by what their submission criteria are.
Sara Paretsky -
No agent wants to see a book until he or she has decided whether to pursue the relationship
Sara Paretsky
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I began wanting to create a detective who really turned the tables on that image of women, to know that you could have a sex life and not be a bad person. You could have a sex life and still solve your own problems. It was eight years from when I started having the fantasy that I was going to create such a detective to when I actually sat down and came up with V. I. Warshawski. It was a long, slow journey to come to a writing voice and do that character.
Sara Paretsky -
And the fury in my community was just staggering. The young priests in the parish were behind the message. The older priests weren't necessarily, but they all followed the orders of the cardinal and read the letter. Every Sunday, 2,000 people came to mass at that parish. The following Sunday, the attendance dropped to 200, and never recovered.
Sara Paretsky -
I spent 10 years as a marketing manager. I've found my experience in the financial world invaluable background for writing about white-collar crimes.
Sara Paretsky -
Every writer's difficult journey is a movement from silence to speech. We must be intensely private and interior in order to find a voice and a vision - and we must bring our work to an outside world where the market, or public outrage, or even government censorship can destroy our voice.
Sara Paretsky -
This was a very progressive group of clergy who foresaw the race riots that were going to take place when Dr. King started helping the local civil rights community push for open housing. They were sort of hoping against hope that we could educate kids in a way that could counter some of the racist messages they were imbibing at home. I don't know whether we did any good, but it changed my life in every single way.
Sara Paretsky -
The day of the march, we were forbidden to go to the march site. The man I worked for, the Presbyterian minister, knew we would want to be sort of martyrs for the cause and risk arrest. He didn't want any of that going on. So he made us stay in the neighborhood.
Sara Paretsky
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Heart surgeons do not have the world's smallest egos: when you ask them to name the world's three leading practitioners, they never can remember the names of the other two.
Sara Paretsky -
The hope for a messiah puts too much on that one person. And you think that absolves you of personal responsibility and you don't have to act because that person will do it for you.
Sara Paretsky -
I believe that to create real-seeming characters, the writer must be willing to go on a voyage of self-exploration. It can be revealing and even painful to explore your own weakness, but it gives you genuine emotion. Characters in fiction come alive because of the believability of their emotional lives and that is what I strive to create.
Sara Paretsky -
She knew the intensity of adolescence, and knew no cure for it except growing up. And then one has age and experience, and mourns the loss of intensity. Maybe it's why musicians and mathmaticians are said to peak young-poetry needs the fire of an unbounded universe.
Sara Paretsky