Donald E. Westlake Quotes

Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering.

Donald E. Westlake

• Life

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Quotes to Explore

• I'm not going to roll back anything. Nothing is going to change with respect to reproductive rights.

  

  Larry Hogan
  • Change
  • Respect
  • Rights

• What brought the British to the Gambia in the first place - which was bigger than it is now - was trade in ivory because the Gambia had a lot of elephants. They wiped out all the elephants and ended up selling Africans.

  

  Yahya Jammeh
  • Up
  • Now
  • Bigger

• A book is not an example of 'women's writing' simply because it is written by a woman. Writing may become 'women's writing' when it could not have been written by a man.

  

  Rachel Cusk
  • Writing
  • Women
  • May

• Now, everybody knows my music. So that's really cool. A lot of kids know it. Now, when I go to a sports game, everybody knows my name.

  

  Nat Wolff
  • Music
  • Kids
  • Game

• I have a vast curiosity about our universe, our origins, and its probable future.

  

  Jack Williamson
  • Future
  • Universe
  • Curiosity

• Even as a 10-year-old, I remember trying to explain to my mother and stepfather how upset and frustrated a messy room made me. But they just couldn't grasp it. They wanted me to be playing with baseballs and frogs while I wanted to be scouring garage sales.

  

  Nate Berkus
  • Trying
  • Remember
  • Mother

• Ants are the dominant insects of the world, and they've had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.

  

  E. O. Wilson
  • World
  • Great
  • Impact

• You're going to have some ups and downs, so you have to prepare yourself to be ready. Those down moments come.

  

  Pablo Sandoval
  • Moments
  • Yourself
  • Ups And Downs

• I cannot even remember a time before being conscious of James Bond.

  

  Barbara Broccoli
  • Time
  • Remember
  • Bond

• I was told that, when 'Betrayal' was being produced by one of the provincial companies in England, the two actors playing those roles actually went into a pub one day and played that scene as if it were really happening to them. The people around them became very uncomfortable.

  

  Harold Pinter
  • People
  • Day
  • Betrayal

• Our family suffers from a hereditary condition called, generally, mental illness. Specifically, multiple family members in successive generations have suffered from either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

  

  Victor LaValle
  • Family
  • Mental Illness

• And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops.

  

  Hans Kung
  • People
  • God
  • Community

• Lebanon, Israel, Ireland, South Africa - wherever there is a bleeding sore on the body of the world, the same hard-eyed narrow-minded fanatics are busy, indifferent to life, in love with death.

  

  J. M. Coetzee
  • Life
  • World
  • Love

• If you're in your early 20s and you're hanging out with a bunch of other people in their early 20s, nobody has a sense of the kinds of problems that real 'workers' run into every day. They're running into a completely different set of problems like 'What's the party going on right now that I should be going to?'

  

  Aaron Levie
  • People
  • Different
  • Real

• Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we're hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.

  

  E. O. Wilson
  • Religious
  • Belief
  • Form

• Travelling was a big part of my childhood and one that I value very much. In some respects, I can't help but be a bit of a gypsy as an adult. I get fidgety if I'm in one place for longer than three months.

  

  Rain Phoenix
  • Help
  • Value
  • Childhood

• I'm sharpest early, and though I can rewrite any time, day or night, I'm useless after noon when it comes to writing first draft.

  

  Hallie Ephron
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Night

• Educate yourself: Read up on current events and books.

  

  Victoria Justice
  • Up
  • Yourself
  • Books

• Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not an expensive piece of wood. Far from it. Just a common block of firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to make cold rooms cozy and warm.

  

  Carlo Collodi
  • Time
  • Fire
  • Cold

• You have to have really thick skin. Art is obviously there to be criticized and there to be taken in different ways. Not everyone is going to like what you do.

  

  Bel Powley
  • Different
  • Art
  • Taken

• Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis.

  

  Samuel E. Morison
  • Mind
  • Bad
  • Reputation

• That inescapable animal walks with me,Has followed me since the black womb held,Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,A caricature, a swollen shadow,A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,The secret life of belly and bone.

  

  Delmore Schwartz
  • Life
  • Black
  • Animal

• Quantum mechanics is just completely strange and counterintuitive. We can't believe that things can be here in one place and there in another place at the same time. And yet that's a fundamental piece of quantum mechanics. So then the question is, life is dealing us weird lemons, can we make some weird lemonade from this?

  

  Seth Lloyd
  • Life
  • Strange
  • Mechanic

• Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering.

  

  Donald E. Westlake
  • Life