Quotes from Donald E. Westlake

What's that old image about a sick person, when they're about to die, they turn their face to the wall? That's what ran through my head when I got over by the wall, of course. My mind isn't always so full of morbid notions, but even Mary Poppins would have had a grim thought or two if she'd had my last four days.

Good fences make good neighbors. - John Dortmunder

The story of New York is speed, is movement, movement without stopping, on the go all the time, gotta hustle

New York is full of water, and neither looks it nor acts it. Of the five boroughs of the city, only one—the Bronx—is on the mainland of the United States, and yet you can spend months in New York without seeing any water except what comes out of the faucet.

However, I was quick enough, thank God, to realize at once that the purpose of that hit, with a piece of wood or something, was not to chastise me for misspelling quesillo but to knock me out. Therefore, if I moved around or

A ladder, in this neighborhood, whadawe gonna do? Wear Con Edison coveralls and helmets? To lean on an alarm box?

Katharine and I played Superghost and laughed at one another's jokes.

A Holiday Inn restaurant with unshrouded windows! We sat by one, looking out at the tumbling tiny Virgin River while the Muzak doggedly chewed and swallowed Scatterbrain: "STILL it's CHAR ming CHAT ter SCAT ter BRAIN." During the meal Katharine talked about Barry: "We were at dinner once, in Los Angeles, and a girl came over to the table, one of his patients that he hadn't seen for

This could blow up in everybody's faces, this could be worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-Contra, worse than the little blue dress.

sat up, and the room was full of a man with a gun. He was standing one pace in from the doorway. The light was off now, but gray daylight ebbed in the airshaft window, and unfortunately I could see him. He was wearing a hat and an overcoat and a gun, and the gun was pointed at me, and his eyes were looking at me, and his eyes appeared to be made of slate.

I sat up, and the room was full of a man with a gun. He was standing one pace in from the doorway. The light was off now, but gray daylight ebbed in the airshaft window, and unfortunately I could see him. He was wearing a hat and an overcoat and a gun, and the gun was pointed at me, and his eyes were looking at me, and his eyes appeared to be made of slate.

Don't move," he said, in a voice that was forty percent gravel and sixty percent inert materials.

Aside from being an organization front, this place was also a legitimate mission, having as much hot soup and as many mismatched shoes as any other mission in New York, and counters to dispense these items were along the left wall. Juvenile delinquents, looking dangerously bored, manned these posts with less than apparent devotion.

He was about forty, with the smooth weathered look of a man who keeps himself in shape with handball and self-esteem.

the Trailways bus groaned to a stop in front of the Rexall store, farted shrilly, and opened its door to release the big-bellied sweat-stained driver and the Down Under Trio.

Three-quarters of the way down the aisle another stewardess, somewhat older and more harried and human, placed me in my seat amid a gigantic Puerto Rican family on its way home for the holidays. (When I say gigantic, I do not mean to imply that any of them were tall.) (Nor do I mean to imply, by that disclaimer, that any of them were thin. I was a bit squeezed.)

The room Victor was in had started life as a garage but had veered. It was now a cross between a den and a radio repair shop, plus some Batcave.

After a summer as jam-packed with incident as Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, the fall and winter of 1967 passed with placid serenity on the island of Anguilla, as free from action as a Saul Bellow novel.

What the Trinidad Guardian had in 1967 called "the most empty diplomatic threat in history" had now become a reality. Two months after British economic aid to Anguilla had stopped because of the end of the Interim Agreement, the British decided to stop all economic aid.

Since Lake Erie water can eat through a human body in under three minutes, a wood or aluminum boat in ten and a steel hull in twenty-five, this resort couldn't offer much by way of the usual swimming and boating

If I'd never found any other reason to advocate pacifism, this would be it; it is so much easier on the nerves not to perpetually be circling your fellow man, hand warily on the hilt of your knife.

Kestrel Call ME a CAB by Donald E. Westlake

he'd rather shoot you and rob the body than be reduced to

A (catch) net (is) no good unless the person to be caught (wants) to be caught.