In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing,… — 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
