Elmore Leonard Quotes

Readers of novels are a strange folk, upon whose probable or even possible tastes no wise book-maker would ever venture to bet.

On the whole, I don't like reading long books. I'm not a fan of 'Ulysses.' And I haven't quite finished 'War and Peace.'

I read very little contemporary anything.

I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.

I also really like to read good books and I don't have enough time to do it. So it's really hard for me to imagine willingly submitting myself to a trilogy of books that I've been told are at the fourth grade reading level which isn't a very nice thing to say but.

Invariably it turns out to be who you've been reading in the last couple of weeks, and two hours or two days [on favourite authors

There is no better indicators of character than the books you have.

There's so many good books, but I'm always like, "I'm sorry, I have five more Faulkners to read, I can't be bothered." Most of the time when you try, you fall on the wrong one.

When I do get to chow down on a book, I try to read ones that are nothing like what I'm writing. So, as I'm currently working on a space opera (of sorts) I'm mostly indulging in urban fantasy.

Considering Adrian had once gotten bored while reading while reading a particularly long menu, I had a hard time imagining he'd read the Hugo book in any language.

I don't want to dis anybody, but someone like Robert Parker. I first read a Spenser book maybe 20 years ago and then read every one that came out. I did that with Tony Hillerman too.

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

I'm a very wide reader. I read serious books and I read airplane, forgettable books. I never have fewer than four or five books beside my bed at night. I particularly enjoy reading about people who have gone through a personal growth.

It's not like most people read anymore. Well, not unless the book has a wizard school or a hot vampire. And, as a Kari Kngsley expert, I'm absolutely certain your life has neither of those things.

There are an awful lot of readers who won't pick up a book if they think it's got anything horrific in it, or paranormal or whatever.

A library represents the mind of its collector, his fancies and foibles, his strength and weakness, his prejudices and preferences. Particularly is this the case if, to the character of a collector, he adds - or tries to add - the qualities of a student who wishes to know the books and the lives of the men who wrote them. The friendships of his life, the phases of his growth, the vagaries of his mind, all are represented.

And the process of reading is such a private one. I once came into a room where a friend of mine was reading one of my books, and he clicked his tongue impatiently and shooed me off.

I do 30 to 40 books a year, so it's a fair amount of reading. Back and forth between nonfiction and fiction. I usually have three or four things that are open on my desk, on my bed, on audiobook in the car.

I read books I hate all the time, and I don't mention them or talk about them.

Seeing one's books on the shelf tells you so much about the way somebody has, over the years, put together their private library, which is a reflection of their minds and their selves.

When I began to read as an adult, my first big enthusiasm was Evelyn Waugh. I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russians, then I started getting more up to date.

Pity the man who has a favorite restaurant, but not a favorite author.

When I receive a new novel from a hopeful publisher - "hoping that I like the book as much as he does" - I check first of all how much dialog there is, and if it looks too abundant or too sustained, I shut the book with a bang.

What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?

The three practical rules, then, which I have to offer, are, --/ Never read a book that is not a year old./ Never read any but the famed books./ Never read any but what you like.