Donald E. Westlake Quotes

One of the things I have become aware of through the years is how much I love the people I write about.

The literary world is filled with good and generous people. But then that's what writing is all about - empathy.

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.

Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses of by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage.

What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.

As a writer, it is always fun to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.

If after you read something, you connect with it, you want to do it.

I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.

I find that it takes a lot of years of living, and many more of reckoning, to come up with one worthwhile paragraph. And when a deadline looms, prayer doesn't hurt, either.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

To be a writer is to connect and to play and to attempt to see clearly and understand. It astounds me regularly that feeling things deeply and writing them down is basically my job description.

I wouldn't be able to do the songs as long as I've been doing if I didn't feel the pulse of the world. But I can feel people and I know what they want. I feel like I know how they are, because I am the people. And I just have a gift.

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

I don't know anyone who is a writer who isn't influenced by the relationships in their life.

I love to write and to get to know the people who are listening.

Through my writing, I have made new friends and continued to learn about this world of ours in all its wonder, with all its challenges.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

I think the music that you make, often it's even better if you identify with other people.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

As a writer, I've always been interested in others.

The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a landscape - affecting it, yes, but only now and then leaving a permanent mark.