Lisa Lutz Quotes
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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.
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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.
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Humor is the only way to tell a story. Especially the dark ones.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You can't be suspicious 24/7. It's too exhausting.
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I'm always accused of being a crime novelist, but I'm not really.
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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.
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I'm not a huge fan of research, but sometimes you get an idea, and then you realize you don't know anything.
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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'.
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I've got no business giving advice to anyone. Even a fictional character.
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The sense of not knowing where I came from let me be as smart as I wanted to be.
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I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B' the summer after I turned 21.
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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.
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I investigate more directly. I tend to ask a lot of questions and don't feel satisfied until I have the answer.
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I am a huge Mel Brooks fan. And I do think that not seeing his canon of classics is a bit criminal or clueless.
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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.
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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.
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I don't feel like I'm a writer who works under any influence.
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To properly investigate a subject, we must investigate a subject's stuff.
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I have certain rules for snooping, under which anything out in the open is fair game.
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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.
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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.