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.
Quotes to Explore
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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.
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The world is too violent right now.
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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.
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Anytime you have a tight race and you lose, it's not pleasant.
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Teach us to give and not to count the cost.
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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.
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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!'
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People want entertainment, a whole night of it, a whole experience.
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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.
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Dread lord and cousin, may the almighty preserve your reverence and lordship in long life and good fortune.
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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.
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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.
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If I had a spreadsheet on my computer, it looked like I was busy.
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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?
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Nothing is inevitable until it happens.
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My calling, as one imperfect human, is to celebrate and uphold life every time I get the chance.
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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.
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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.
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I get maximum satisfaction out of buying children's clothes online.
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I had fun coming every day and playing in front of a packed house - it was exciting.
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I don't make changes to confuse anyone. I'm just searching. That's what causes me to change. I'm just searching for myself.
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When I was a kid, I always looked up to people like B.B. King and Ray Charles.
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I wrote the first draft of the New People quickly but it had been percolating a lot longer. It's a hard question to answer because I'd been working on another novel for years and when I gave up on that, this one came very easily. But I think the work had been going on a lot longer than the actual writing.
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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.
