Elmore Leonard Quotes

I'm more attracted to the bad guys. Why? Because in real life, I don't know any good guys. I know okay guys. I know polite guys. I know people who can control themselves.

The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It's kind of rude, and yet really it's where art comes from. It's not the same as courage. It's closer to bad manners than to courage. If you're going to be a writer, you basically have to say, 'this is just who I am'. There's a certain indefensibility about it. It's not about loving your community and taking care of it — you're not attached to the chamber of commerce. It's a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11.

I certainly play people on the edge quite a lot. I am interested in what makes people odd and what makes them different. In life I try to play the edges. I have a horror of the herd. There are many, many different sorts of people. A lot of people are fairly uninteresting. I want to play the interesting ones. The villains are always more interesting to portray. Shakespeare knew that.

People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.

I go out and I say and do what I want - even if people may find that shocking. One could, of course, decide to be suffocated by all the pomp here in Élysée Palace. But if you decide to resist it, then you won't be suffocated.

I like to take a shot with things. I like to take risks. I'm attracted to things that are different than the average run-of-the-mill stuff.

A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.

One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism.

My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them.

I don't live by "The Rules" you know, and if there's one person who has influenced me in that way of thinking, someone who is a maverick, someone who does 'that' to the system then it's Ian Botham.

When the temperamental and unconventional people are not mere plagiarists of dead eccentrics, they lack, in almost every case, thehistoric sense.

the mad have a grace all their own

I may appear to be an eccentric old man... But this is a free choice.

I think crazy people are helpful, crazy people who are the catalysts who make other things happen for everyone else. It's almost as if they're not really making things happen in their own life, but their hyperactivity is triggered for everyone else.

We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others.

The world has certain rules - Hollywood has certain rules - but it doesn't mean you have to play by them, and I don't, or I'd be a miserable person.

Never argue with a six-year-old who shaves.

Society demands conformity at the expense of individual liberty. Let us be for once a non conformist to be fully alive.

All one can do for one's character in times like these, is to prove that one does not belong to these times.

By all means break the rules.

I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A REBEL. I NEVER DO THINGS THE WAY THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DONE. EITHER I GO IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OR I CREATE A NEW DIRECTION FOR MYSELF, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE RULES ARE OR WHAT SOCIETY SAYS.

I have only two rules which I regard as principles of conduct. The first is: Have no rules. The second is: Be independent of the opinion of others.

Maybe what I do isn't going to be acknowledged by people, but that's me. It's my nature to do things that are weirder and less understood and that was a path I needed to take

Anybody talented in any way - they're called eccentric.