129 Quotes by Sara Paretsky

Organizer is kind of a grand term for what I was doing. I answered an ad that the Presbyterian Church of Chicago put up on college campuses. I was at the University of Kansas, and it's somewhat relevant to my life and work that I'm a Jew. But they weren't doing a religious litmus test. They wanted energetic, civil-rights-committed college students to come help them run some summer programs.

I look at the great poets of the Soviet Union, like Anna Akhmatova, who endured far worse then anything we've seen or hopefully that we will ever see. If they could keep writing and keep a voice alive, keep people hopeful through their poetry, then I would be ashamed to stop and to give in. It would be really self-indulgent, unacceptable, and inexcusable to walk away from it.

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.

I'm jealous of everyone discovering Lovesey and Diamond for the first time-you have a wonderful backlist to catch up on. Me, all I can do is wait for the next book.

I think Peter Dickinson is hands down the best stylist as a writer and the most interesting storyteller in my genre.

If you're born lucky, you don't have to be good.

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.

Rule number something or other -- never tell anybody anything unless you're going to get something better in return.

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.