Laura Miller Quotes

And we did it because it’s time for City Hall to stop looking out for City Hall and start looking out for the people like you and me who are footing the bill.

For while agents and editors often misunderstand their market and sometimes reject good or even great works, they do prevent a vast quantity of truly execrable writing from being published.

Others like City Hall the old way, when they could make deals behind closed doors with your tax money.

Every small town that I had ever been to had had a caboose.

Nonfiction brought me back to earth and sobered me up whenever it seemed like I’d become too drunk on the lives and loves of imaginary people, but that doesn’t mean it was any less thrilling or transporting, although it was often more illuminating.

But despite the challenges, I love being your Mayor.

Given the way some fought for the status quo when I authored the new Ethics Code and created the city’s first Ethics Commission, we are going to need your strong support to get an even tougher Ethics Code passed this year.

The first book we fall in love with shapes us every bit as much as the first person we fall in love with.

Now it’s time to focus on basics for people in our neighborhoods… and real ethics reform at City Hall.

In many ways, our campaign this year will be the same as last time: We’re still going to focus on fixing up basics and cleaning up ethics at City Hall.

Buying a book is not about obtaining a possession, but about securing a portal.

It’s wasteful spending like this that not only forces tax increases and cuts in vital services… but also really make you wonder: who is City Hall looking out for?

Writers would be warm, loyal, and otherwise terrific people-if only they’d stop writing.

The conditions conducive to deep thought have become increasingly rare in our highly mediated lives… Now we live in an attention economy, where the most in-demand commodity is ‘eyeballs.

Dreams would always end with you, and then mornings would steal you away with a cruelty that haunted my days.

From my very first day in the Mayor’s office, I have worked closely with the Council members who share our vision of a city hall that really protects taxpayers and cares… yes… about the little things that make a big difference in people’s lives.

People like to complain about the state of contemporary literature, but I can only assume they don’t read it very widely.

There is so much chaos and dysfunction going on with the federal government that Dallas can’t wait any longer for federal help.

Maybe everything really does just have an expiration date–one that you can’t see until she tells you she’s leaving, and then she’s gone.

Of all the butterflies that chose to stay,
I’m in love with the one that got away.

But there is so much more to do for the city we love… a Dallas with roads as strong as our businesses, parks as beautiful as our children, a downtown as tall as our imagination.

If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children’s books suddenly turn up very high on the list.

The city has to do what any citizen or family does, when you have a dream. You tighten your belt. You sacrifice some luxuries. Above all, you don’t waste a dime.

Tracking the shiny is so much easier than digging for gold!

Dallas is a positive, get-it done city.

A faint smell of lilac filled the air. There was always lilac in this part of town. Where there were grandmothers, there was always lilac.

If there’s one thing I hope people are certain of it’s this: I’m looking out for YOU – the taxpayer.

A great novelist excels on the small scale and the large, the individual leaf and root as well as the forest; good fiction convinces us that the imaginary is real by selecting exactly the right detail and rendering it perfectly.

There’s still is a status-quo group at City Hall who likes things done the old way, behind closed doors.

In the year since we brought things into the open with a clean breath of fresh air at City Hall, we have learned about corrupt spending practices and unethical conflicts of interest that waste your money… and keep Dallas from being the great city of our dreams.

The relationship between book and reader is intimate, at best a kind of love affair, and first loves are famously tenacious. […] First love is a momentous step in our emotional education, and in many ways, it shapes us forever.

Dallas is a great city, and it’s worth fighting for.

Adventure … is what might otherwise be called hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit.