Donald E. Westlake Quotes

For me, the characters are part of the story, and come out of its development. I don't base them on people, or parts of people – the Frankenstein method. I base them on what I've noticed about the human race. … I cannot tell you how stories develop. I have an initial idea, and start telling myself the story, day by day.

Donald E. Westlake

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Quotes to Explore

• I started auditioning but at times would feel depressed, as I would get shortlisted but never received the final call. Only when the commercials were released would I come to know that I was not selected.

  

  Fatima Sana Shaikh
  • Know
  • Never
  • Feel

• Don't get between me and a really good picture in the darkroom, because then I want to go straight to the darkroom and develop it. But once that's done, I'm fine.

  

  Sally Mann
  • Good
  • Done
  • Me

• Anytime you have a tight race and you lose, it's not pleasant.

  

  Vern Buchanan
  • You
  • Race
  • Lose

• Teach us to give and not to count the cost.

  

  Saint Ignatius
  • Religion
  • Teach
  • Cost

• To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

  

  Karl Shapiro
  • Know
  • Hate
  • Child

• I am young, and I think all young guys would love to play a superhero - any superhero - it doesn't matter. I could be a superhero that would just turn into a big blob or something like that, but I could tell all the ladies, 'Hey, I am superhero!'

  

  Daniel Curtis Lee
  • Think
  • Like
  • Young

• People want entertainment, a whole night of it, a whole experience.

  

  Dan Gilbert
  • People
  • Experience
  • Night

• With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I've come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Fun
  • Taken
  • Regret

• Dread lord and cousin, may the almighty preserve your reverence and lordship in long life and good fortune.

  

  Owen Glendower
  • Life
  • Good
  • Long

• I wanted to weave a green thread through the Conservative party; that's my job, and I signed up imagining that I would be in a very small minority within my party, possibly even on my own, battling away on these issues.

  

  Zac Goldsmith
  • Up
  • Job
  • Small

• But, look, Washington is a town that creates myths for its own existence and its own amusement, and I was a subject of myth, sort of like Grendel in Beowulf - you know, not seen very often but often talked about.

  

  Karl Rove
  • Know
  • Look
  • Existence

• If I had a spreadsheet on my computer, it looked like I was busy.

  

  Nate Silver
  • Like
  • Computer
  • Busy

• Nothing is inevitable until it happens.

  

  A. J. P. Taylor
  • Nothing
  • Happens
  • Inevitable

• My calling, as one imperfect human, is to celebrate and uphold life every time I get the chance.

  

  Victoria Moran
  • Life
  • Time
  • Chance

• Many mathematicians derive part of their self-esteem by feeling themselves the proud heirs of a long tradition of rational thinking; I am afraid they idealize their cultural ancestors.

  

  Edsger Dijkstra
  • Proud
  • Tradition
  • Self-Esteem

• We need another revolution in the Arab world. We need an education revolution. If there's one thing we need to focus on, it's redesigning our educational systems.

  

  Queen Rania of Jordan
  • World
  • Education
  • Focus

• I get maximum satisfaction out of buying children's clothes online.

  

  Samantha Bee
  • Children
  • Clothes
  • Buying

• 'As Long As I Know I'm Getting Paid' is a satire. Lyrically, I want to be direct. With my history in Fall Out Boy, there's some expectation that I'm going to be lyrically obtuse. But that song is a straight-faced satire of consumerism.

  

  Patrick Stump Fall Out Boy
  • Long
  • History
  • Song

• We like to take impossible things and actually make them happen.

  

  Elizabeth Diller

• The starting point for the new history, both in Europe and America, has been the record of births, marriages, and deaths, which most literate societies preserve in one form or another. In colonial America, surviving records of this kind - as of every other kind - are most abundant for New England.

  

  Edmund Morgan
  • America
  • History
  • Starting

• Very few people know this, but I love organizational products and tools. One of my favorite places to shop are container stores where you can get bins, boxes and crates to organize your life.

  

  Kimora Lee Simmons
  • People
  • Life

• There are a lot of laws from Europe about employing people which are absolute nonsense.

  

  Ben Elliot
  • People

• There is a brief time for sex, and a long time when sex is out of place. But when it is out of place as an activity there still should be the large and quiet space in the consciousness where it lives quiescent. Old people can have a lovely quiescent sort of sex, like apples, leaving the young quite free for their sort.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • People
  • Time
  • Long

• For me, the characters are part of the story, and come out of its development. I don't base them on people, or parts of people – the Frankenstein method. I base them on what I've noticed about the human race. … I cannot tell you how stories develop. I have an initial idea, and start telling myself the story, day by day.

  

  Donald E. Westlake
  • People