D Westlake Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Must be going crazy---

my favorite poet lately

has been me! — Wayne Kaumualii 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

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

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

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

Donald Westlake's Parker novels are among the small number of books I read over and over. Forget all that crap you've been telling yourself about War and Peace and Proust-these are the books you'll want on that desert island. — Lawrence Block

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

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

Tennis lessons westlake village provide a good coaching for youngest.Because that are very experiance men in tennis.His students on the importance of strength and agility training as well as mental and psychological strength and the roles they play within the game of tennis. — Various

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

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

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

If you're picturing Farmer Juan and his family gratefully wiping sweat from their brows when you buy that Ecuadorian banana, picture this instead: the CEO of Dole Inc. in his air-conditioned office in Westlake Village, California. He's worth $1.4 billion; Juan gets about $6 a day. Much money is made in the global reshuffling of food, but the main beneficiaries are processors, brokers, shippers, supermakets, and oil companies. — Steven L. Hopp

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

His eyes were eggy with blue yolks. — 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

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

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

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

I grew up in Westlake Villiage, a suburb of L.A. There was a guy there who was a fighter and was like, 'I'll teach you to box.' I started a little bit of boxing, then it crossed over into jiu-jitsu. I was into it for a little while, but then I started doing basketball, baseball, team sports. — Jonathan Lipnicki

(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

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

If Carl Hiaasen and Donald Westlake had a literary love child, he would be Timothy Hallinan. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

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

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

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