Quotes from Lawrence Sanders

I get up at 7:30. I grab a canvas bag and go out. I say hello to the people in the supermarket and liquor store. I buy the 'New York Times.' I go to the beach and think about characters and plot.

At 2, I start preparing fish or chicken for dinner. I don't drive. I don't have hobbies. I have no desire to travel.

The Department is wary of fanatics. [They] don't bend; they break.

I know a good chop house near Macy's. Do you like mutton chops?" "Hate them." "Idiot. That heavy, gamy taste … nothing like it." "Can I get a broiled kidney?" "Of course." "Then let's have lunch at your chop house.

can do something about crime. Not a lot, I admit, but something. Because crime, all crime, is irrational. It is opposed to the logic of life, and so it is evil. And that is why I became a cop.

sometimes people use complete honesty as an excuse for sadism.

I'm not Gore Vidal or William Buckley.

Writing is the most important thing in my life - above marriage.

One never knows, do one?

Connie, have you been trying to call me?" No Archie. "Well, my phone has not been ringing all day, and I thought it might have been you.

If I felt any better I'd be unconscious.

It's a cat, but not racist.

I was an only child-- and so I became an only man." Joshua Bigg The Tenth Commandment

Close but no cigar

Eat, drink, smoke, swim in the ocean, play tennis, golf, and poker, watch polo, read trash, listen to pop singers, occasionally attend the theatre, opera, ballet, charity bashes, and private shindigs, buy clothes and trinkets, write to old friends, party with new friends, and sleep. I think that about covers it.

I drove home in a State of Utter: utterly startled, utterly confused, utterly flummoxed.

What I'm trying to convey is that I love my parents. Of course. But just as important, I enjoy them. How many sons and daughters can say that?

There, there, there.

A painting did not have to be beautiful; it had to be true. Then it was beautiful.

ANDERSON: Who copped your cherry? MRS. EVERLEIGH: My brother Ernie. Does that shock you? ANDERSON: Why should it? I'm from Kentucky.

the need for gun control laws and a new moral climate.

the Feast of San Gennaro on Mulberry Street, one of the city's big ethnic festivals.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

After I squirmed into the snakepit of national politics, I realized that a ruler must equate the unpredictable with the unreliable. The future was too important to leave to whim.