Quotes from Donald E. Westlake

a faked suicide attempt (is) dishonesty

Island we'd lost our Internet access to insolvency months ago.

After three weeks of constant bobbing and weaving, constant trouble, constant worry, my final week in Guerrera would be calm and serene.

lived in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Do you know just how horrible New Brunswick, New Jersey is?" She smiled faintly, as she shook her head. "No, I don't." "You're lucky. Those who do have experience of New Brunswick, New Jersey are scarred for life.

Well, god damn it," Cayzer said. "Sometimes I don't know if I was stupid all my life or if I'm just getting stupid with old age. Come on along, you can ask them yourself.

A friend of mine'll follow him home tonight", Tiny said, "to get me the address. He's on the four to twelve. Around one, I'll put on a ski mask and go to that guy's house and put his head in his holster." "A ski mask," Dortmunder echoed. He was thinking how much good a ski mask would do to disguise this monster. In order to be effectively disguised, Tiny would have to put on, at a minimum, a three-room apartment.

My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up.

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.)

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.

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.)

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 ?"

Well, you might not think it to look at me," Dortmunder told him, "but I got a family crest." "Have you?" "Yeah. And it's got a motto on it." "I am anxious to hear this motto." "Quid lucrum istic mihi est." Mr. Hemlow squinted; the red-headed hawk in flight. "I'm afraid my Latin is insufficient for that." "What's in it for me," Dortmunder translated.

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

I sat up and the room was full of a man with a gun.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

had been happy to play the part of a Brontë heroine if it meant she wouldn't have to learn how to cook.

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?

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.

The office containing these two men was of such hushed opulence that it seemed as though their words were borne to one another on small plush pillows.