Quotes from Donald E. Westlake

Well, she was dead, and there was no use crying over spilt milk.

a whole lot of ideas isn't a plan. A plan is a bunch of details that mesh with one another, so you go from this step to this step like crossing a stream on a lot of little boulders sticking out, and never fall in. Ideas without a plan is usually just enough boulders to get you into the deep part of the stream, and no way to get back.

since dispassionate self-knowledge is not a quality held in much esteem by the majority of the human race

Dortmunder and the Major strolled away down the long corridor overlooking customs, with the duty-free shops on one side of the corridor and on the other side the railing where people can stand and look down at their returning relatives and visiting foreign friends being degraded.

Mr. Dortmunder, this is too good a story to just jump in and tell the end." Dortmunder hated stories that were that good, but

I Googled it all." Dortmunder had heard of this; some other nosey parker way to mind everybody else's business.

I started writing when I was 11. In my late teens, I was writing short stories of every conceivable type and sent them to everything from 'Future Science Fiction' to 'The Sewanee Review.'

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

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.

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.)

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

If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all.

The tortured similes, the brooding introspection, the jaundiced view of society - nobody ever has any fun in a Ross Macdonald book.

The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.

My work schedule has changed over the years. The one constant is, when at work on a novel, I try to work seven days a week, so as not to lose touch with that world. Within that, I'm flexible on hours and output.

Christmas shows us the ties that bind us together, threads of love and caring, woven in the simplest and strongest way within the family.

All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers.

A guy named Peter Rabe wrote a batch of books for Gold Medal in the '50s, and he was absolutely the single largest influence on writing style. I was completely in love with the way the man wrote.

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.

Everybody in New York is looking for something. Once in a while, somebody finds it.

With writing, I prefer the solo effort, but when a team is working right, as it did on 'The Grifters,' boy, it's exhilarating.

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 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.