Quotes from Lawrence Block

I went into the bathroom and caught sight of my reflection in the mirror over the sink. All my years looked back at me, and I could feel their weight, pressing down on my shoulders. I ran the shower hot and stood under it for a long time...

Earlier you made her sound like a victim. Now she sounds like a villain." "Everybody's both.

And I gather they did." "What is it Mehitabel always says? In archy and mehitabel? 'There's life in the old dame yet.' Ã¢â'¬Â "And she said that?" "What she said, word for word, was 'So I took him into the bedroom and fucked his brains out.

Milland went on to other things, but his picture graced the cover of Markham: The Case of the Pornographic Photos, which is a notably clunky title and subtitle.

But there is supposed to be sex in this book, isn't there? I suppose I could write a chapter without having anybody do anything to anybody, just talking and thinking, but it seems a bad idea for the very first chapter of the book. The reader might get discouraged. It seems, oh, very egoish to feel that total strangers will be that interested in what one says or thinks, but everybody

They are properly described as works of fiction, with the understanding that fiction does not imply lack of truth so much as a willingness to refashion factuality in the service of drama, and perhaps in search of a higher truth.

That's not fair! That's a cry that rings out over the years on every school playground, because if there's one thing every child seems to be born knowing, it's that life is supposed to be fair. And, if there's one lesson he learns sooner or later, it's that it's not.

I went back to the Chevy. Some juvenile delinquent had relieved me of my radio aerial—in the morning he would go to shop class and make a zip gun out of it. Deprived of music, I headed dolefully for Brooklyn. I went back to the Chevy. Some juvenile delinquent had relieved me of my radio aerial—in the morning he would go to shop class and make a zip gun out of it. Deprived of music, I headed dolefully for Brooklyn. SIX

Well, you got me there, I could have said. You're right, I broke the rules, I didn't play fair. And you know what? Fuck you.

Around one-thirty it started raining lightly. Almost immediately the umbrella sellers turned up on the streetcorners. You'd have thought they had existed previously in spore form, springing miraculously to life when a drop of water touched them.

Nobody'd believe a story like yours except a dyke who shaves dogs.

No, liebchen, not if it's too painful for you to talk about it." "Devious sheenie bastard." "Devious, yes. Sheenie, yes. Bastard, no. What did you used to do in bed?

Not like a state trooper. Oh, you're a delight. No, it doesn't matter, forget it. Hey, let's go upstairs." "You're not kidding." "Put your hand here and you'll see if I'm kidding." "Well, what do you know about that? It's got a great big cock on it." "Christ!

You can build a whole world of lies, as long as each lie reinforces every other lie. You can create a masterful structure of sheer logic if you begin with one false postulate. All it takes is consistency.

the switchboard operator answered every call, "Hotel Dixie, so what?

I watched men win and I watched them lose. They were playing a straight house. Nothing was loaded. The house took its own little percentage and got rich. Money made in bootlegging and gunrunning and dope smuggling and whoremongering was invested quite properly in an entire town that stood as a monument to human stupidity, a boomtown in the state with the sparsest population and the densest people in the country. Vegas.

There was a click and the line was dead. Johnny

First the man takes a drink, as one hears it said, and then the drink takes a drink. And even if that's where it stops, before the third step of and then the drink takes the man

Great system: the poison and the antidote come in the same bottle

The Turks have dreary jails.

that would have hidden the decades of filth that had left their stamp upon the wooden floor.

When the window turned dark, it was presumably night; when it grew blue again, I guessed that morning had come.

You don't sleep. You're thirty-four years old and lost the power to sleep when you were eighteen. Is

The book was How to Write a Novel, by Manuel Komroff; a professor at Columbia University, he was a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction. His book, published in 1950, is available from used booksellers for between $10 and $25.