Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Donald E. Westlake - Page 2

My wife says in Richard Stark's world, the honest citizens are goofy. Okay, they are. I don't know if it's good or bad, but because he's outside his own world, it sort of freed up the environment around him to be a little more looser and goofier.

If you leave me here," the guy on the floor said, "he'll kill me tomorrow morning." Parker looked at him. "So you've still got tonight," he said.

What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back.

For a long while, I found Parker impossible. He went away for 23 years. I tried to bring him back a few times, and I sort of figured out where he came from, why he went away, and why he came back. The thing that I have to tap into for Parker is in some way the outsider. If I can tap into the outsider, I can write about Parker, and if I can't, I can't.

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

I have no known marketable skills.

What advice I would give to anybody about anything. Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering." (When asked in an interview about what question he's tired of being asked.)

A grifter's got an irresistible urge to be the guy who's wise. There's nothin' to whipping a fool. Hell, fools are made to be whipped. But to take another pro. Even your partner, who knows you and has his eye on you. That's a score! No matter what happens.

Christmas shows us the ties that bind us together, threads of love and caring, woven in the simplest and strongest way within the family.

Eyes wide and blank as the buttons on a first Communion coat.

When the guy with asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away.

If Chester had a failing, it was that he believed people were what they thought they were.