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Donald E. Westlake QUOTES

Donald E. Westlake QUOTES

1 " My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up. "

― Donald E. Westlake

2 " Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Two Much

3 " Hispanics have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Come to that, the Irish and Italians and Jews also have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Thinking it over, everybody has a long tradition of defiance against authority. (Except the Germans, of course.) "

― Donald E. Westlake , Dancing Aztecs

4 " It was apparent...that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Dancing Aztecs

5 " Two solid weeks of beautiful weather. Clear sunny days, low humidity, temperature in the seventies, air so brisk and clean you could read E PLURIBUS UNUM on a dime across the street. Clear cloudless nights, temperature in the fifties, the sky a great soft raven’s breast, an immense bowl of octopus ink salted with a million hard white crystalline stars and garnished with a huge moon pulsing with white light. It was disgusting. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Drowned Hopes (Dortmunder, #7)

6 " (Novelists, when their characters drive cars, never feel compelled to describe precisely what the physical actions are of hands, feet, eyes, knees, elbows. Yet many of these same novelists, when their characters copulate, get into such detailed physical description you’d think they were writing an exercise book. We all know the interrelation between the right ankle and the accelerator when driving a car, and we needn’t be told. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Dancing Aztecs

7 " Zachary’s partner, a younger man with a moustache named Freedly— Well, no. The man was named Freedly. Zachary’s partner, a younger man named Freedly with a moustache— Zachary’s partner, a moustached younger man named Freedly— Freedly said, “Have you got the ring on you? "

― Donald E. Westlake , Why Me? (Dortmunder, #5)

8 " That’s a geometric figure, that bird, he don’t exist without an angle. "

― Donald E. Westlake , The Hot Rock (Dortmunder, #1)

9 " huddled together at the left end of the bar, as silent and miserable as kittens in a sack with the bridge getting close. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Watch Your Back! (Dortmunder, #13)

10 " had been happy to play the part of a Brontë heroine if it meant she wouldn’t have to learn how to cook. "

― Donald E. Westlake , The Road To Ruin (Dortmunder, #11)

11 " May knew John had a very bad tendency, when things got unusually difficult, to sink with an almost sensuous pleasure into a warm bath of despair. Once you’ve handed the reins over to despair, to mix a metaphor just a teeny bit, your job is done. You don’t have to sweat it any more, you’ve taken yourself out of the game. Despair is the bench, and you are warming it. "

― Donald E. Westlake , What's So Funny? (Dortmunder, #14)

12 " You wanna know what’s happening to New York?” he asked. “I tell you what you do. You go to a used-magazine store, you look at the covers of science fiction magazines from the thirties. That’s what’s happening to New York. "

― Donald E. Westlake , The Road To Ruin (Dortmunder, #11)

13 " They turned and found themselves facing a bullet head on an ICBM body lumpily stuffed into a black shirt and a brown suit. It was as though King Kong were making a break for it, hoping to smuggle himself back to his island disguised as a human being. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Drowned Hopes (Dortmunder, #7)

14 " However, inflation and unemployment have affected the shopping centers at least as much as the rest of the economy, so that here and there among the brave enticements stood a storefront dark, silent, its windows black, its forehead nameless, its prospects bleak. The survivors seemed to beam the more brightly in their efforts to distract attention from their fallen comrades, but Dortmunder could see them. Dortmunder and a failed enterprise could always recognize one another. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Nobody's Perfect (Dortmunder, #4)

15 " an old Underwood office machine so big and black and ancient it looked as though it should come with a foreign correspondent attached. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Watch Your Back! (Dortmunder, #13)

16 " Dortmunder followed Kelp as he carried the tray down along the bar past the regulars, where the third was now saying, “The idea of the flat tax is, you just pay the same as one month’s rent. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Get Real (Dortmunder, #15)

17 " I sat up and the room was full of a man with a gun. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Somebody Owes Me Money

18 " 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 got a motto on it.” “I am anxious to hear this motto.” “Quid lucrum istic mihi est.” Mr. Hemlow squinted; the red-headed hawk in flight. “I’m afraid my Latin is insufficient for that.” “What’s in it for me,” Dortmunder translated. "

― Donald E. Westlake , What's So Funny? (Dortmunder, #14)

19 " 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 they happened to come together? What odd chance had put ex-presidents Bush, Clinton, and Carter on that same plane? "

― Donald E. Westlake , The Road To Ruin (Dortmunder, #11)

20 " If buyer’s remorse ever accomplished anything in this world,” Max said, “we’d all still be living in caves. "

― Donald E. Westlake , Watch Your Back! (Dortmunder, #13)