Donald E. Westlake Quotes & Sayings

Those 4 guys in the late 60's who attacked a jewel merchant on New York's West 46th St. on the sidewalk, so they could steal his jewel-filled station wagon, which they abandoned 2 blocks later because none of them could drive a stick shift. Where would I be without such people? — Donald E. Westlake

Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be. A drain on the State, I shouldn't wonder. — Donald E. Westlake

an old Underwood office machine so big and black and ancient it looked as though it should come with a foreign correspondent attached. — Donald E. Westlake

Eyes wide and blank as the buttons on a first Communion coat. — Donald E. Westlake

It was apparent...that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong. — Donald E. Westlake

Since he'd been born rich into a family that had been a long time rich, he'd never known the need to suppress his feelings, so he pouted completely and might even have stamped his foot again, except he sensed that a kind of lumpish stillness might better illustrate the sulk he'd fallen into. — Donald E. Westlake

Story ideas had never been a problem for him, there'd always been more ideas than time to write them, he'd reject one perfectly good notion because he fell more simpatico toward a different one. But of course he could never go back to any of those ancient story stubs, they wouldn't still have juice in them.

For him, creating a novel was like gardening; you choose your seed, you treat it exactly the way the package says, and gradually a thing of beauty - or of sturdiness, or of nutrition - grows up and becomes yours. The seed you don't nurture doesn't wait to be doted over later; it shrivels and dies. — Donald E. Westlake

Probably nobody ever jogs toward the room where they will write their suicide note, — Donald E. Westlake

My work schedule has changed over the years. The one constant is, when at work on a novel, I try to work seven days a week, so as not to lose touch with that world. Within that, I'm flexible on hours and output. — Donald E. Westlake

Whenever things sound easy, it turns out there's one part you didn't hear. — Donald E. Westlake

Why, Wally," he said. "Except for leaving out the part where Tom continues to be a homicidal maniac, it's all the truth. — Donald E. Westlake

Real life. The greatest interactive fiction of them all. — Donald E. Westlake

The trouble with real life is, there's no reset button. — Donald E. Westlake

What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back. — Donald E. Westlake

Dortmunder had helped by expressing doubts. "If the Puerto Ricans all come here," he'd said, for instance, "how come it's such a hot idea for us to go there?" Another time, he'd expressed the opinion that airplanes were too heavy to fly, and a little later he'd pointed out he didn't have a passport. "You don't need a passport," May told him. "Puerto Rico's part of the US." He stared at her. "The hell it is." But it turned out she was right about that; Puerto Rico wasn't exactly a state, but it was something in the United States of America - maybe it was "of. — Donald E. Westlake

At the moment, the discussion concerned global warming. "The reason for global warming," one of them said as Dortmunder leaned his front against the bar somewhere down to the right of them, "is air conditioners. — Donald E. Westlake

If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all. — Donald E. Westlake

Hoke Moseley is a magnificently battered hero. Willeford brings him to us lean and hard and brand-new. — Donald E. Westlake

Two days in a row with morning appointments! What kind of evil cloud was he under here, all of a sudden? — Donald E. Westlake

My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up. — Donald E. Westlake

telling the jokes - was the setups. Why were that priest, that rabbi, and that minister walking down that street? Where were they headed? How had they happened to come together? What odd chance had put ex-presidents Bush, Clinton, and Carter on that same plane? — Donald E. Westlake

Christmas reminds us we are not alone. We are not unrelated atoms, jouncing and ricocheting amid aliens, but are a part of something, which holds and sustains us. As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December's bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same. Christmas shows us the ties that bind us together, threads of love and caring, woven in the simplest and strongest way within the family. — Donald E. Westlake

If buyer's remorse ever accomplished anything in this world," Max said, "we'd all still be living in caves. — Donald E. Westlake

I also wanted Parker to operate in the Internet age without losing being Parker. He's always operated in the world without really being with the world, and cyberspace means that the rest of us are more and more living the same way. — Donald E. Westlake

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote. — Donald E. Westlake

Since the conversation had deteriorated to a loop, Dortmunder abandoned it and looked out his window instead at the thin sunlight out there, until Murch's Mom made the right turn onto Eighth Avenue and sank contentedly into the perpetual blockage there, a traffic snarl well into its second century, running - or not running - from below Penn Station up to above the Port Authority bus terminal. — Donald E. Westlake

The way London carries on about the Thames you'd think it was a big deal, including lining it with all their classiest buildings, such as Parliament. San Francisco, the wind-up toy of cities, never gets over its Bay, and Venice is so much in love with its Bay that it's sinking into it. New York is full — Donald E. Westlake

Mother of the bride had been determined that her daughter would have a church wedding, and women who successfully name their infant daughters Tiffany do tend to get their own way, so an evening wedding it was. — Donald E. Westlake

Dortmunder and the Major strolled away down the long corridor overlooking customs, with the duty-free shops on one side of the corridor and on the other side the railing where people can stand and look down at their returning relatives and visiting foreign friends being degraded. — Donald E. Westlake

Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten. — Donald E. Westlake

The fictioneer labors under the constraint of plausibility; his inventions must stay within the capacity of the audience to accept and believe. God, of course, working with facts, faces no limitation. — Donald E. Westlake

As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December's bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same. — Donald E. Westlake

Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother? — Donald E. Westlake

Everybody in New York is looking for something. Once in a while, somebody finds it. — Donald E. Westlake

When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the two. That usually works well, though occasionally an idea for the wrong guy drifts through my mind. — Donald E. Westlake

There are no Territories to light out for, not in this century. It was no longer easy to become the new you. New or old, you were already you. — Donald E. Westlake

Santa Claus is a god. He's no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus. Think of the white beard, the chariot pulled through the air by a breed of animal which doesn't ordinarily fly, the prayers (requests for gifts) which are annually mailed to him and which so baffle the Post Office, the specially-garbed priests in all the department stories. And don't gods reflect their creators' society? The Greeks had a huntress goddess, and gods of agriculture and war and love. What else would we have but a god of giving, of merchandising, and of consumption? — Donald E. Westlake

Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it. — Donald E. Westlake

All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers. — Donald E. Westlake

Hispanics have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Come to that, the Irish and Italians and Jews also have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Thinking it over, everybody has a long tradition of defiance against authority. (Except the Germans, of course.) — Donald E. Westlake

A lady doctor in the foreground, black horn-rims and white lab coat, suddenly cried, "You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Do you realize what you're doing to the reality concepts we're trying to instill in these people? How do you expect them to differentiate between illusion and reality when you do something like this?" — Donald E. Westlake

The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed. — Donald E. Westlake

Wish you would." "Right. When I had the emerald again, I was in a cell. I guess they were afraid the rest of the guys might try to spring me right away, 'cause they hid me out in a precinct on the Upper West Side for the first — Donald E. Westlake

Like the residents of Brigadoon, the people in the church drifted in a long and dreamless sleep, freed of struggle and expectation. — Donald E. Westlake

May knew John had a very bad tendency, when things got unusually difficult, to sink with an almost sensuous pleasure into a warm bath of despair. Once you've handed the reins over to despair, to mix a metaphor just a teeny bit, your job is done. You don't have to sweat it any more, you've taken yourself out of the game. Despair is the bench, and you are warming it. — Donald E. Westlake

In the cab going downtown, Doug believed he now understood the sensations felt by a person slowly sinking into the grasp of an octopus. Play dead, he told himself. But how? — Donald E. Westlake

I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off. — Donald E. Westlake

Two solid weeks of beautiful weather. Clear sunny days, low humidity, temperature in the seventies, air so brisk and clean you could read E PLURIBUS UNUM on a dime across the street. Clear cloudless nights, temperature in the fifties, the sky a great soft raven's breast, an immense bowl of octopus ink salted with a million hard white crystalline stars and garnished with a huge moon pulsing with white light. It was disgusting. — Donald E. Westlake

Bobbi doubted there was ever much future for a couple who had nothing in common except heterosexuality. — Donald E. Westlake

However, inflation and unemployment have affected the shopping centers at least as much as the rest of the economy, so that here and there among the brave enticements stood a storefront dark, silent, its windows black, its forehead nameless, its prospects bleak. The survivors seemed to beam the more brightly in their efforts to distract attention from their fallen comrades, but Dortmunder could see them. Dortmunder and a failed enterprise could always recognize one another. — Donald E. Westlake

huddled together at the left end of the bar, as silent and miserable as kittens in a sack with the bridge getting close. — Donald E. Westlake

Zachary's partner, a younger man with a moustache named Freedly - Well, no. The man was named Freedly. Zachary's partner, a younger man named Freedly with a moustache - Zachary's partner, a moustached younger man named Freedly - Freedly said, "Have you got the ring on you? — Donald E. Westlake

I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and come back for a while in the afternoon. I am a very lenient boss. — Donald E. Westlake

(Novelists, when their characters drive cars, never feel compelled to describe precisely what the physical actions are of hands, feet, eyes, knees, elbows. Yet many of these same novelists, when their characters copulate, get into such detailed physical description you'd think they were writing an exercise book. We all know the interrelation between the right ankle and the accelerator when driving a car, and we needn't be told. — Donald E. Westlake

In order to hold your faith intact be sure it's kept unsullied by fact. — Donald E. Westlake

If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers. — Donald E. Westlake

Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink at the reader, never pull his punches. Better for him, better for me. — Donald E. Westlake

New York doesn't exactly have neighborhoods, the way most cities do. What it has is closer to distinct and separate villages, some of them existing on different continents, some of them existing in different centuries, and many of them at war with one another. English is not the primary language in many of these villages, but the Roman alphabet does still have a slight edge. — Donald E. Westlake

His eyes were eggy with blue yolks. — Donald E. Westlake

They turned and found themselves facing a bullet head on an ICBM body lumpily stuffed into a black shirt and a brown suit. It was as though King Kong were making a break for it, hoping to smuggle himself back to his island disguised as a human being. — Donald E. Westlake

The August sun, God's blood-blister ... — Donald E. Westlake

Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great self-assurance that they don't know how to do their jobs. "I don't know how to sell this," they explain, frowning, as though it's your fault. "I don't know how to package this. I don't know what the market is for this book. I don't know how we're going to draw attention to this." In most occupations, people try to hide their incompetence; only in publishing is it flaunted as though it were the chief qualification for the job. — Donald E. Westlake

A friend of mine, now retired, was then a major exec at a major bank, and one of her jobs, the last four years, was the farewell interview. — Donald E. Westlake

That's a geometric figure, that bird, he don't exist without an angle. — Donald E. Westlake

Dortmunder followed Kelp as he carried the tray down along the bar past the regulars, where the third was now saying, The idea of the flat tax is, you just pay the same as one month's rent. — Donald E. Westlake

I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again. — Donald E. Westlake

In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell. — Donald E. Westlake

Found himself marveling at how many different names there are in this world. All individual, most pronounceable. Think of that. — Donald E. Westlake

What advice I would give to anybody about anything. Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering. (When asked in an interview about what question he's tired of being asked.) — Donald E. Westlake

A grifter's got an irresistible urge to be the guy who's wise. There's nothin' to whipping a fool. Hell, fools are made to be whipped. But to take another pro. Even your partner, who knows you and has his eye on you. That's a score! No matter what happens. — Donald E. Westlake

I sat up and the room was full of a man with a gun. — Donald E. Westlake

You wanna know what's happening to New York?" he asked. "I tell you what you do. You go to a used-magazine store, you look at the covers of science fiction magazines from the thirties. That's what's happening to New York. — Donald E. Westlake

If Chester had a failing, it was that he believed people were what they thought they were. — Donald E. Westlake