Donald E. Westlake Quotes
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I believe my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong.
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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.
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A friend of mine, now retired, was then a major exec at a major bank, and one of her jobs, the last four years, was the farewell interview.
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Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it.
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Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering.
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All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers.
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If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.
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If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all.
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I also wanted Parker to operate in the Internet age without losing being Parker. He's always operated in the world without really being with the world, and cyberspace means that the rest of us are more and more living the same way.
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It was apparent ... that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong.
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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.
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When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the two. That usually works well, though occasionally an idea for the wrong guy drifts through my mind.
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In order to hold your faith intact be sure it's kept unsullied by fact.
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Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink at the reader, never pull his punches. Better for him, better for me.
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I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again.
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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.
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Brian had all that day to figure out what was going on, and yet he didn't.
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Everybody in New York is looking for something. Once in a while, somebody finds it.
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I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and come back for a while in the afternoon. I am a very lenient boss.
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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.
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What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back.'
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Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?
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Hispanics have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Come to that, the Irish and Italians and Jews also have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Thinking it over, everybody has a long tradition of defiance against authority. (Except the Germans, of course.)
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Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten.