I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
Santa Claus is a god. He's no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus. Think of the white beard,… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
What advice I would give to anybody about anything. Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering." (When asked… — 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
There are a couple of writers I admired who were very good at giving the character's emotion without stating what that emotion… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back. — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
