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

• The world is too violent right now.

  

  Jackie Chan
  • World
  • Right
  • Now

• 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
  • Hate
  • Know
  • 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 always accused me of not smiling like my rival Olga Korbut, but that was just my personality. When you're balancing on a nine-inch beam, you have to concentrate. But if you look back at the footage, I was always smiling and waving at the crowd after my performances.

  

  Nadia Comaneci
  • People
  • Personality
  • Smiling

• 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

• Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported?

  

  A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
  • Why
  • Want
  • Technology

• 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

• The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God's presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God's word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.

  

  J. I. Packer
  • Life
  • God
  • Soul

• I had a mind inquiring enough to question world events, as well as the passion fostered by my background to care, but I lacked the emotional maturity to process these things. That made me ripe for Islamist recruitment. Into this ferment came my recruiter, himself straight out of a London medical college.

  

  Maajid Nawaz
  • World
  • Mind
  • College

• I would say, yeah, I'm a spiritual person.

  

  Holly Hunter
  • Spiritual

• Follow me and do exactly what the song says Smoke weed, take pills, drop outta school, kill people And drink and jump behind the wheel like it was still legal.

  

  Marshall Bruce Mathers III Bad Meets Evil'
  • People
  • School
  • Song

• 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