"In the most basic way, writers are defined……" — Donald E. Westlake
"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, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell."
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Donald E. Westlake
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31 Quotes by Donald E. Westlake
Donald E. Westlake has 31 quotes on this site.
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Publishing is the only industry I can think of where most of the employees spend most of their time stating…
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Hoke Moseley is a magnificently battered hero. Willeford brings him to us lean and hard and brand-new.
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Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God…
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Whenever things sound easy, it turns out there's one part you didn't hear.
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Those 4 guys in the late 60's who attacked a jewel merchant on New York's West 46th St. on the…
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Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it.
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I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and…
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Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character,…
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When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the…
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Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of…
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The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures…
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My work schedule has changed over the years. The one constant is, when at work on a novel, I try…
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