Quotes from Lawrence Block

It's the easiest thing in the world to know God's will. You just wait and see what happens, and that's it.

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city... But there is one thing about it. Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not.

Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.

I can't persuade myself that one of the problems facing the planet today might be a shortage of books by me.

As my grandmother used to say, if you've got nothing good to say about someone, let's hear it.

Is that what I am? I don't know what the hell I am anymore. Oh, bullshit. You're a guy, a human being. Just another poor son of a bitch who doesn't want to be alone when the sacred ginmill closes.

there is no better way to learn how to write than by writing a novel.

Fiction writing starts off by requiring the towering arrogance that enables one to sit down at the typewriter in the belief that someone somewhere will actually be eager to read the productions of our own private imaginations. But that arrogance must be buffered by the humility that leads us to learn our craft and strive to make our work comprehensible and inviting and accessible to the reader.

Novels are written—as life is lived—One Day At A Time.

Booze and tobacco and lots of sex. It keeps a lad young.

Life, I'd heard someone say, is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. It seemed to me that it was both at once, even for those of us who don't do much of either.

There are eight million stories in the naked city, he intoned. You remember that program? Used to be on television some years back. I remember. They had that line at the end of every show. 'There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.' I remember it. Eight million stories, he said. You know what you got in this city, this fucked-up toilet of a naked fucking city? You know what you got? You got eight million ways to die.

I stood for a moment, letting my ears do the walking, and then I gave the bell a thorough ring and waited thirty thoughtful seconds before ringing it again. And that, let me assure you, is not a waste of time. Public institutions throughout the fifty states provide food and clothing and shelter for lads who don't ring the bell first.

Many of us may not know too much about our characters, but we tell the reader altogether too much.

fiction works because a part of the mind forgets that it's fiction while we're reading it.

Your unconscious mind takes the things you can't handle and plays with them while you sleep until some of the sharp corners are worn off.

Cain said he wasn't Abel's keeper. Are those our only choices, keeper or killer?

The New Your energy goes beyond anything you'll find anywhere else. It's too much for some people and it grinds them down, but it lifts up and animates the rest of us.

And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

Take care. It seems to me that people have only been saying that phrase on parting for the past few years or so. All of a sudden everyone started to say it, as if the whole country abruptly recognized that ours is a world which demands caution.

I find him whelming, personally. Neither overwhelming nor underwhelming but somewhere in the middle.

So many changes, eating away at the world like water dripping on a rock.

What time is it? Time? Time. Oh, She said. A quarter to four. Mr. Markham, something terrible has happened. She didn't have to tell me that. Something perfectly dreadful had happened, by God. Someone had called me in the middle of the bloody night.