Donald E. Westlake Quotes

Quotes about:

Books Character Choices Crime Eyes Giving Language

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

Long Ago, Cake, Choices

"Two Much". Book by Donald E. Westlake (Chapter 21), 1975.

52 Copy quote
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

Family, Christmas, Struggle

36 Copy quote
Whenever things sound easy, it turns out there's one part you didn't hear.

Donald E. Westlake

Art, Sound, Easy

Donald E Westlake (2011). “Drowned Hopes”, p.36, Overamstel Uitgevers

21 Copy quote
The trouble with real life is, there's no reset button.

Donald E. Westlake

Real, Reset Button, Buttons

Donald E Westlake (2011). “Drowned Hopes”, p.264, Overamstel Uitgevers

12 Copy quote
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

Jobs, Book, Thinking

16 Copy quote
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

Attitude, Writing, Vocabulary

Donald E. Westlake (2014). “The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany”, p.28, University of Chicago Press

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There are a couple of writers I admired who were very good at giving the character's emotion without stating what that emotion was. Not saying "He was feeling tense," instead saying, "His hand squeezed harder on the chair arm," as if staying outside the guy. I wanted to try doing that. I wanted to have a really emotional story in which the characters' emotions are never straight - out told to you, but you get it.

Donald E. Westlake

Couple, Emotional, Giving

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

5 Copy quote
In order to hold your faith intact be sure it's kept unsullied by fact.

Donald E. Westlake

Order, Facts

"Don't Ask". Book by Donald E. Westlake, April 1993.

12 Copy quote
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

New York, Block, Jewels

11 Copy quote
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

Believe, Facts, Faces

"Trust Me on This". Book by Donald E. Westlake, 1988.

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I know people who have suffered writer's block, and I don't think I've ever had it. A friend of mine, for three years he couldn't write. And he said that he thought of stories and he knew the stories, could see the stories completely, but he could never find the door. Somehow that first sentence was never there. And without the door, he couldn't do the story. I've never experienced that. But it's a chilling thought.

Donald E. Westlake

Block, Writing, Thinking

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

4 Copy quote
I don't think I would have been a good architect. Really, I have thought about this from time to time, and I might have wound up like my father, who never did find that which he could devote his life to. He sort of drifted from job to job. He was a traveling salesman, he was a bookkeeper, he was an office manager, he was here, there, there. And however enthusiastic he was at the beginning, his job would bore him. If I hadn't had the writing, I think I might have replicated what he was doing, which would not have been good.

Donald E. Westlake

Father, Writing, Thinking

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

7 Copy quote
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

Christmas, Struggle, Caring

34 Copy quote
Parker wasn't supposed to be a series. He was supposed to be one book, and if he was only going to be in one book, I didn't worry about it. And then an editor at Pocket Books said "Write more books about him." So I didn't go back at that point and give him a first name. If I'd known he would've been a series, I would've done two things differently. First, I would've given him a first name because that means for 27 books, I've had to find some other way to say, "Parker parked the car."

Donald E. Westlake

Book, Writing, Mean

Source: www.avclub.com

5 Copy quote
I'm one of the narrative-push people. I don't outline, I don't plan ahead. So I'm my first reader, telling myself the story as I'm going along. Since I haven't designed it ahead of time, each day I have to be sure that the footing is solid before I make the next step. I think you could be more intricate if you work it out ahead of time.

Donald E. Westlake

Thinking, People

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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Years ago, I heard an interview with violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The interviewer said, "Do you still practice?" And he said, "I practice every day." He said, "If I skip a day, I can hear it. If I skip two days, the conductor can hear it. And if I skip three days, the audience can hear it." Oh, yes, you have to keep that muscle firm.

Donald E. Westlake

Firm, Violinist, Audience

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

5 Copy quote
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

Prayer, War, Animal

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Science fiction is a weird category, because it's the only area of fiction I can think of where the story is not of primary importance. Science fiction tends to be more about the science, or the invention of the fantasy world, or the political allegory. When I left science fiction, I said "They're more interested in planets, and I'm interested in people."

Donald E. Westlake

Thinking, People, Political

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

7 Copy quote
The thing that I prefer, when I'm working on a book, is to do a seven-day week, because it's easy to lose some of the details of what you're doing along the way.

Donald E. Westlake

Book, Week, Easy

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

4 Copy quote
In a funny way, the stories keep themselves alive by emerging from one another. I like that.

Donald E. Westlake

Emerging

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

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One of our continuing myths was summed up in Huckleberry Finn: Our escape, what we think of as our escape, is that we can always light out for the territories. Well, we really can't, not anymore, but that's part of the American character - that belief that at any moment, I could just drop the coffee cup and disappear. And it makes for a different self-image and a different story, in a way.

Donald E. Westlake

Coffee, Character, Thinking

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

6 Copy quote
Hoke Moseley is a magnificently battered hero. Willeford brings him to us lean and hard and brand-new.

Donald E. Westlake

Hero, Brands, Battered

8 Copy quote
If your subject is crime, then you know at least that you're going to have a real story. If your subject is the maturing of a college boy, you may never stumble across a story while you're telling that. But if your story is a college boy dead in his dorm room, you know there's a story in there, someplace.

Donald E. Westlake

Real, Boys, College

Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2006.

5 Copy quote
I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again.

Donald E. Westlake

Looks, Notes, Make Sense

The Book Reporter interview, www.bookreporter.com. April 6, 2001.

7 Copy quote
Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?

Donald E. Westlake

Inspiring, Mothers Day, Mom

"Fictional character: Roy Dillon". "The Grifters", www.imdb.com. 1990.

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Latest quotes from interviews

"I've had stuff of mine adapted by other people, so I've come to the conclusion that a movie is a different form from a novel and there is no such thing as a true adaptation. You have to adapt to this other thing and do it right. But that voice of the original should somehow still be there, and the original intent should still be there. So if the original writer saw the movie, the writer would say, "Well, that's not what I wrote, but that's what I meant." And if you can do that, I think you've done your job as a screenwriter."

- Donald E. Westlake,

www.avclub.com, added Sep 1, 2017

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Donald E. Westlake

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Born: July 12, 1933
Died: December 31, 2008
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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