Quotes from Jesse Kellerman

When I was four, we went to Oahu. It was the first time we celebrated Passover away from home.

The mystery form was very helpful for me as a beginning writer because mystery novels and suspense novels have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Naturally, it was easier for me to envision becoming a novelist than it is for most people. I had two great in-house teachers; I had parents who considered a career in the arts a real possibility rather than a dreamy arrow shot into the sky.

It's always been a struggle to differentiate myself, but I like my parents. I enjoy doing events with them, and I don't feel I should purposely avoid something just for the sake of being different.

I ought to be more hardboiled; I'd like to be. I don't think I have it in me. To write in clipped sentences. To employ gritty metaphor in the introduction of sultry blondes... I can't do it, so why bother trying?

The most important lesson my parents taught me is that writing is a job, one that requires discipline and commitment. Most of the time it's a fun job, a wonderful job, but sometimes it isn't, and those are the days that test you.

Five people read my work before its ready for publication, and I solicit opinions from all of them: my wife, my agent, my editor, and my parents.

We crime novelists have a great pulpit. We write about justice and about correcting injustice.

I had some trepidation about working with someone else, especially a family member. You don't want work to affect your personal relationship.

I think everyone assumes that I talk to my parents a lot about writing, but I didn't - they're my parents. We didn't have constant workshops running in my household.

It's much easier to identify and fix problems in language and timing when you hear the words being read.

I prefer to write about ordinary people who find themselves in a singularly bizarre situation - that is to say, the one moment in their lives when they are forced to confront danger or mystery.

Writing is just something I've always done. It's just kind of the reality of who I am.

The final product in a play is not just the written word. It's the production, the performance. The script is, of course, a very important piece; but it's only one element. Ultimately, yours is one of several voices. People can change your work in a play for better or worse.

There was a time, after I earned my graduate degree and before I sold my first novel, when it looked like I might have to get an office job.

Aside from a brief stint as a writing tutor during graduate school, I have managed to avoid respectable employment all my adult life.

I don't intend to write the same kind of book for the rest of my life because I feel I would not be satisfied only writing in one mode.

Science, literature, and common sense tell us that the self is a fickle thing, subject to revision in real time, and that the chasm that exists between any two people exists inside each and every one of us.

Being a member of the Nintendo generation, I've got a really short attention span.

Art requires choices, the more specific, the better.

All writers start out mimicking other writers. I've never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns.

It's not as though I decided to sit down and write a mystery novel so I could capitalize on my parents' success.

Crime novels have a clear beginning, middle, and end: a mystery, its investigation, and its resolution. The reader expects events to play out logically and efficiently, and these expectations force the writer to spend a good deal of time working on macrostructure rather than prettifying individual sentences.

All my books deal with the effect of intent upon action, how our understanding of good and evil depends heavily on context.