The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers,… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
A guy named Peter Rabe wrote a batch of books for Gold Medal in the '50s, and he was absolutely the single… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
I did the first Parker novel, in which he got caught, and the editor at Pocket Books took me to lunch and… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
The thing that I prefer, when I'm working on a book, is to do a seven-day week, because it's easy to lose… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
“It was apparent...that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said,… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
I do bookstore signings, and it seems to me that I get a variety of men and women, more women than I'd… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
Parker wasn't supposed to be a series. He was supposed to be one book, and if he was only going to be… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
The other thing that I got back then - the Parker novels have never had much of anything to do with race.… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating with great… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
I'm one of the narrative-push people. I don't outline, I don't plan ahead. So I'm my first reader, telling myself the story… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
In the first batch of readers, back in the '60s and '70s, the criminal class was still literate, so I would get… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
“Story ideas had never been a problem for him, there'd always been more ideas than time to write them, he'd reject one… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
Science fiction is a weird category, because it's the only area of fiction I can think of where the story is not of primary… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
The other thing that I got back then - the Parker novels have never had much of anything to do with race. There have… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
I was writing everything. I grew up in Albany, New York, and I was never any farther west than Syracuse, and I wrote Westerns.… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
New York doesn't exactly have neighborhoods, the way most cities do. What it has is closer to distinct and separate villages, some of them… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
“In the cab going downtown, Doug believed he now understood the sensations felt by a person slowly sinking into the grasp of an octopus.… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back. — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
“Since he’d been born rich into a family that had been a long time rich, he’d never known the need to suppress his feelings,… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
“Well, you might not think it to look at me,” Dortmunder told him, “but I got a family crest.” “Have you?” “Yeah. And it’s… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
“telling the jokes—was the setups. Why were that priest, that rabbi, and that minister walking down that street? Where were they headed? How had… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
“Dortmunder followed Kelp as he carried the tray down along the bar past the regulars, where the third was now saying, “The idea of… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be.… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the two. That usually works… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
“There are no Territories to light out for, not in this century. It was no longer easy to become the new you. New or… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
“wish you would.” “Right. When I had the emerald again, I was in a cell. I guess they were afraid the rest of the… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
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… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share
