Donald E. Westlake Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• I don't think I ever have trouble with writer's block. It's different when you make it up as you go - that means you're going to get stuck. I wouldn't call it writer's block, I'd say, "I don't know where the hell this story is going."

  Donald E. Westlake

  Block, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• If your subject is crime, then you know at least that you're going to have a real story. If your subject is the maturing of a college boy, you may never stumble across a story while you're telling that. But if your story is a college boy dead in his dorm room, you know there's a story in there, someplace.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Real, Boys, College

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• I do bookstore signings, and it seems to me that I get a variety of men and women, more women than I'd expect, and grown-ups among my readers.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Men, Men And Women, Variety

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• Writing is flat, so if you only have part of one eye working, you still can do the job. It's just that you sit there and you're angry, which doesn't help.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Writing, Eye, Helping

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• The British were doing crime stories first, but the British thing is a very different thing. There, the stories are about restoring a break in the fabric of society. The American thing has never been worrying about breaks in the fabric of society, but about people doing their job, whether it's police procedurals or criminals or whatever.

  Donald E. Westlake

  People, Worry, Police

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• It's so difficult, particularly with an antisocial character. It's much easier if he's already a blank page, but once you've written on him, it's hard to keep him that stripped down.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Character, Antisocial, Difficult

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• The only thing I learned from the architecture is keep the bathroom and the kitchen near each other, so you don't have to run pipes all over the place.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Running, Kitchen, Bathroom

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Team, Doors, People

  The Book Reporter interview, www.bookreporter.com. April 21, 2000.

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• In the first batch of readers, back in the '60s and '70s, the criminal class was still literate, so I would get letters from people in prison; they thought that I was somebody whom they could shop-talk with, and they would tell me very funny stories. I got a lot of those. Guys who were going to wind up doing 10 to 15 for bank robbery, yes, were reading my books.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Book, Reading, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

• Hoke Moseley is a magnificently battered hero. Willeford brings him to us lean and hard and brand-new.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Hero, Brands, Battered

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• I've had stuff of mine adapted by other people, so I've come to the conclusion that a movie is a different form from a novel and there is no such thing as a true adaptation. You have to adapt to this other thing and do it right. But that voice of the original should somehow still be there, and the original intent should still be there. So if the original writer saw the movie, the writer would say, "Well, that's not what I wrote, but that's what I meant." And if you can do that, I think you've done your job as a screenwriter.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Thinking, People, Different

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• I was writing everything. I grew up in Albany, New York, and I was never any farther west than Syracuse, and I wrote Westerns. I wrote tiny little slices of life, sent them off to The Sewanee Review, and they always sent them back. For the first 10 years I was published, I'd say, "I'm a writer disguised as a mystery writer." But then I look back, and well, maybe I'm a mystery writer. You tend to go where you're liked, so when the mysteries were being published, I did more of them.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Writing, Mystery

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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• The other thing that I got back then - the Parker novels have never had much of anything to do with race. There have been a few black characters here and there, but the first batch of books back then, I got a lot of letters from urban black guys in their 20s, 30s, 40s. What were they seeing that they were reacting to? And I think I finally figured it out - at that time, they were guys who felt very excluded from society, that they had been rejected by the greater American world.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Book, Character, Thinking

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Men, Phones, Killing

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• Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Sorry, Space, Advice

  The Book Reporter interview, www.bookreporter.com. April 21, 2000.

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• I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Character, Giving, Choices

  The Book Reporter interview, www.bookreporter.com. April 21, 2000.

  41 Copy quote

• New York doesn't exactly have neighborhoods, the way most cities do. What it has is closer to distinct and separate villages, some of them existing on different continents, some of them existing in different centuries, and many of them at war with one another. English is not the primary language in many of these villages, but the Roman alphabet does still have a slight edge.

  Donald E. Westlake

  New York, War, Cities

  Donald E. Westlake (2017). “What's So Funny?”, p.22, Hachette UK

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• If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Ideas, Publishing, Industry

  The Book Reporter interview, www.bookreporter.com. April 21, 2000.

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• When the guy with asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Gun, Fire, Guy

  "The Mourner". Book by Donald E. Westlake, www.nytimes.com. 1963.

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• If you leave me here," the guy on the floor said, "he'll kill me tomorrow morning." Parker looked at him. "So you've still got tonight," he said.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Morning, Guy, Tonight

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• Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be. A drain on the State, I shouldn't wonder.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Stories, Wonder, Literacy

  Interview with Joe Hartlaub, www.bookreporter.com. April 21, 2000.

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• Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Writing, Three, Chess

  The Book Reporter interview, www.bookreporter.com. April 21, 2000.

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• A grifter's got an irresistible urge to be the guy who's wise. There's nothin' to whipping a fool. Hell, fools are made to be whipped. But to take another pro. Even your partner, who knows you and has his eye on you. That's a score! No matter what happens.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Wise, Cheating, Eye

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• Christmas shows us the ties that bind us together, threads of love and caring, woven in the simplest and strongest way within the family.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Caring, Ties, Together

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• For a long while, I found Parker impossible. He went away for 23 years. I tried to bring him back a few times, and I sort of figured out where he came from, why he went away, and why he came back. The thing that I have to tap into for Parker is in some way the outsider. If I can tap into the outsider, I can write about Parker, and if I can't, I can't.

  Donald E. Westlake

  Writing, Long, Outsiders

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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