Donald E. Westlake Quotes & Sayings

“Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?”

“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.”

“Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.”

“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.”