If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all. — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers. — 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
Writing is flat, so if you only have part of one eye working, you still can do the job. It's just that… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
Westlake is allusive, indirect, referential, a bit rococo, Stark strips his sentences down to the necessary information. — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
My work schedule has changed over the years. The one constant is, when at work on a novel, I try to work… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
I know people who have suffered writer's block, and I don't think I've ever had it. A friend of mine, for three… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
“now he was requesting as much microfilm as the librarians would let him have at one time, and was buzzing it all… — Donald E. Westlake Copy Share Image
I don't think I ever have trouble with writer's block. It's different when you make it up as you go - that… — 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
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
