Elmore Leonard Quotes

Ian Fleming was my cousin, and he wanted me to play Dr. No, but by the time he got around to remembering to tell the producers, they'd already cast someone else. Spilt milk!

Tatiana...you and I had only one moment..." said Alexander. "A single moment in time, in your time and mine...one instant, when another life could have still been possible." He kissed her lips. "Do you know what I'm talking about?" When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street. "I know that moment," whispered Tatiana.

Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.

the instant he knew he loved her, she slipped down his body and out of his arms

If we miss this chance to make a fresh start, we may look back on this moment from some later vantage point and realize how much that failure cost us all.

Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend. It would look ridiculous to do what we're doing now when I'm 40. That's why I want to destroy my career before it's too late.

And so, too, I speak of love: he who is held by it is held by the strongest of bonds, and yet the stress is pleasant. Moreover, he can sweetly bear all that happens to him. When one has found this bond, he looks for no other.

You know, sometimes I wonder what things would be like if I just ... met you one day. Like normal people do. If I just walked by you on some street one sunny morning and thought you were cute, stopped, shook your hand, and said, "Hi, I'm Daniel.

When I was eighteen, River Phoenix was far and away my hero. Think of all those early great performances - My Own Private Idaho. Stand by Me. I always wanted to meet him. One night, I was at this Halloween party, and he passed me. He was beyond pale - he looked white. Before I got a chance to say hello, he was gone, driving off to the Viper Room, where he fell over and died. That's a lesson.

Just supposing," he said, "just supposing" --he didn't know what was coming next, so he thought he'd just sit back and listen--"that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn't know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something very important to someone I've only just met and not crash into lorries a the same time, what would you say..." He paused, helplessly, and looked at her. "I should do.

A bloody good thing, but too late.

Sooner or later usually means too late

The touch was exactly what the touch of a lover's hand should be: familiar, yet exciting as a whispered promise. I felt an almost irresistible urge to take her hand and place it flat against my chest, near my heart. Maybe I should've done it. I know now that she would've laughed, if I'd done it, and she would've liked me for it. But strangers that we were then, we stood for five long seconds and held the stare, while all the parallel worlds, all the parallel lives that might've been, and never would be, whirled around us.

If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him.

And like a passing thought, she fled In light away.

I, had an excellent instructor. One that you currently have locked up. If you want to talk about skills going to waste, then go look in your own jail.

Whenever Beauty looks, Love is also there.

I don't know what else to tell you. I often think how different my life would have been - how much happier - if you'd been a part of it. One day.

What a terrible thing, I thought, to let a moment go.

What is opportunity to the man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into nonentity.

The longer you're with the wrong person, you could be completely overlooking the chance to meet the right person.

Once more, this is love: it rings and you open up unless it looks like an ax murderer.

She had been born for this man, and she had spent so many years trying to accept the fact that he had been born for someone else.