Patrick deWitt Quotes
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Love is dangerous; it's not something to be trifled with. As good as it feels on the way in, it feels that much worse on the way out.
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As a reader I want to be present and entertained. I don't want to be taught lessons, and I don't want to be spoken down to. I want to be treated as a peer and to be made to feel welcome.
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When you meet someone you love, whether or not they love you back, something occurs in you that makes you want to improve yourself.
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The hardest thing in the world for a writer is to amass a readership. So many good books come out, and so many good books disappear.
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The initial spark, your affection for the characters, all those things can disappear. It's a perilous thing.
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I was halfway through a rough draft of 'The Sisters Brothers' when it came time to start the 'Terri' adaptation.
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'The Sisters Brothers' has endeared so many prize juries because the Western format has more of a broad appeal and is familiar to readers.
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I've got a publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who's been working little miracles for me, but it's true the budgets aren't what they once were in terms of advertisement and book tours.
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Lies can be wonderful things, and when a lie is told artfully, if it's done with a degree of craftsmanship, I can't help but admire the liar.
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The question of likability is a bit of a puzzler for me. You know, I don't write people with likability in mind. It's more whether or not I find them compelling.
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The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it.
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I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.
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Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.
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I carry a small spiral notebook with me at all times and have been doing this for many years. There's a shoe box in my closet filled with these notebooks, each riddled with notes and impressions, ideas, schemes, and soup recipes.
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If I were to continue to work in an established mode, it stands to reason the work would be limited by this - that it would never surpass the prior work in quality.
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I'm never doing anything by rote. I'm only on thin ice, and I think that that's a good place to be. I feel like when you push yourself like that, the rewards can be pretty great.
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When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble.
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'The Sisters Brothers' started out as a little bit of dialogue between these two men who became Eli and Charlie Sisters.
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More and more, I find myself turning away from everything relating to contemporary society. I don't know how healthy it is, but I am creating a very private bubble that I live in.
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I know a lot of people who use the Internet really wisely. It enriches their lives in some way.
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I am a bit prudish, I think. It's hard for me to write about sex, and I don't really care to read about it, either.
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Bernie Madoff is probably more nuanced then I'm giving him credit for, but I just couldn't get under his skin.
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I am increasingly unimpressed by works of art that require a college degree to understand. I think that art should be for everyone. And people should be moved by it.
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One of the nice things about writing is you can take essentially painful things in your life and turn them into something that might be useful, or at least entertaining, to somebody else.