{"author":"Laura Lippman","author_id":"Laura+Lippman","total_quotes":14,"quotes":[{"text":"There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter how many times one has flipped the coin and gotten heads. Every flip, the odds are the same. Every day, you could be unlucky all over again.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["luck"],"id":1685,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"The past was worth remembering and knowing in its own right. It was not behind us, never truly behind us, but under us, holding us up, a foundation for all that was to come and everything that had ever been.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["history","past"],"id":5598,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"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.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["motherhood"],"id":55398,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"Going to college don't make you from somewhere, any more than a cat born in an over can call itself a biscuit.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["college","new-orleans","transplant","tulane"],"id":80869,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"There's a serendipity to real life that the Internet can't duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well, sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for, and it's that book that changes your life.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["library","library-books","library-in-the-digital-age"],"id":132541,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"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.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["family","fiction","mystery"],"id":151354,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["jealously","life","need","possessions","regret","wanting","wishes"],"id":193552,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"My grandmother’s parents had thought she was too good for my grandfather. They were Irish, shipworkers who had gotten the hell out of Locust Point and moved uptown, to Charles Village, where the houses were much bigger. They looked down on my grandfather just because he was where they once were. It killed them, the idea that their precious youngest daughter might move back to the neighborhood and live with an Italian, to boot. Everybody’s got to look down on somebody. If there’s not somebody below you, how do you know you’ve traveled any distance at all in your life? For my dad’s generation, it was all about the blacks. I’m not saying it was right, just that it was, and it hung on because it was such a stark, visible difference. And now the rules have changed again, and it’s the young people with money and ambition who are buying the houses in Locust Point, and the people in places like Linthicum and Catonsville and Arbutus are the ones to be pitied and condescended to. It’s hard to keep up.('Easy As A-B-C').","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["class-struggle","racism"],"id":220582,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"I would prefer,' Pat said, his voice a little stiff, as if he expected resistance, 'that I be the cosigner on the loan, if you go through with this. I know I'm not a famous billionaire, but I think my credit's just as good.'No, you're wrong about that,' Tess said, shaking her head.What?'As far as I'm concerned, it's better. I'd much rather do business with you.'They shook on it. It was a deal, after all, not a time for hugging.Favors, Arnie Vasso had once said. Your father knows all about favors. He had meant it as an insult, a sly reference to the corners the Monaghans and Weinsteins cut here and there. Now Tess saw it for the simple truth it was: Her father understood favors. How to do them, how to accept them, how to walk away when the price was too steep. It was a lesson she wouldn't mind learning someday.Maybe this was the place to start.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["maturity"],"id":271074,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"},{"text":"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.","author":"Laura Lippman","tags":["happiness","health","luck"],"id":277093,"author_id":"Laura+Lippman"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":14,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}