Top 124 Quotes & Sayings by George Pelecanos - Page 2

I never went to a writing school, so 'The Wire' was my writing school.

'True Grit' is one of the few books my sons let me read to them - and paid attention to - when they were younger.

My sons are black, and my daughter is Latina.

I'm a very sentimental, emotional person.

I'm proudly a crime writer, but it would be really inaccurate to call me a mystery writer.

I'd get off the set of 'The Wire' at 3 A.M. or even 4 A.M. and drive home to Washington to see my kids sleep and give them a kiss. I'd get up at 7 A.M., while the kids were still in bed, and drive back to Baltimore.

There's a science to brain development. The brains of teenage boys are crowded with impulse and adrenaline. By the time they hit their 20s, their brains are dominated by conscience and reason.

In its rather clinical view of death, 'True Grit' rivals the hardboiled world of 'Red Harvest'-era Dashiell Hammett and prefigures Cormac McCarthy by 20 years.

When I was a kid in the '60s, I went shopping in downtown Silver Spring. Hecht's, JCPenney, the little retailers - they sponsored all my sports teams.

I've seen firsthand how books can change people's lives. It happened to me.

I'm more apt to shed a tear than my wife about family matters.

I'm a strong believer in second chances.

I find 'True Grit' to be one of the very best American novels: It is a rousing adventure story and deeply perceptive about the makeup of the American character.

I get chills when I think that there's a statue of Phil Lynott on a street in Dublin, that people leave flowers by the statue. I love stuff like that.

It's a tradition that a writer will try to plant his flag in a certain city and protect that. The way to get your rep is to find the essence of the city and get it down on paper.

There was a hole in Washington fiction, I felt, when I started out. Most D.C. novels were about politics or the federal city or people who lived in Georgetown or Chevy Chase - it was definitely a very narrow focus.

I love writing books, but it's a solitary experience. When I'm on a film set, I'm with a bunch of other artists working together to make one thing.

I was a movie freak before I was a book lover.

Until a book starts forming in your head, you always wonder, 'Am I going to be able to do this again?'

Kids need a father around to make them whole. They need their mom.

I was a child in the '60s and a teenager in the '70s, which was the golden age of film as far as I'm concerned, between American film and the Italian reinvention of genre film.

Is there a more violent book than the Bible?

Many fathers and sons never get to reconcile their differences or come to an understanding that fills the gap between love and expectations.

What we were all always saying with 'The Wire' was that there's a whole group of people that America just sort of wants to throw away. They want to forget about them, and if they could, they'd get rid of them. They are Americans - they're worth saving; they're worth helping.

I've been working in adult prisons and juvenile prisons for some time.

Guys who feel like it makes you a man to make babies, they're completely misguided. It makes you a man to be a father. And I'm not moralising about marriage or anything. I understand that people split up, and marriages don't work out, and people do the best they can. But if you're going to not be there from the very beginning, then don't do it.

Every day I'm not working or writing is a wasted day to me.

I do feel like that's what a writer does, is he goes into other people's heads.

I go to church for the cultural element. It's where you go to see Greek people once a week. It's real important to me, and I hope my children see they're part of something bigger than just this family.

I'm a fast driver.

My father's diner, the Jefferson Coffee Shop, was a simple, 27-seat affair in Washington D.C., open for breakfast and lunch - coffee and eggs in the morning, cold cuts and burgers in the afternoon.

When I was a teenager, I thought if any of my friends or people at school see me reading a book, they're gonna think I'm weak. So I didn't even do it in private. Then I grew up, got into college, and the teachers turned me on to books, and I got hooked.

My take on gentrification and change is it's usually always a better thing, because when you see all these businesses open and flourishing, that means there are more jobs.

As far as I'm concerned, the voices of Washington, black Washington, it's poetry, man. There's beauty in it.

I live in a bigger house, but I still live in the neighbourhood I grew up in.

I was 15 years old in 1972, and yeah, when the 1970s broke, I was out there. Everything was kinda swirling around me - the music, women, cars, the culture.

People like to talk to me. I don't know why.

I like writing about people who spend their time trying to help others for the greater good. That's what Americans are supposed to be about, right?

It's relatively easy to adopt kids if you're not trying to get kids that look exactly like you.

I live in a blue-collar neighborhood, and if anyone knows what I do for a living, they don't seem to care.

The Next Right Thing has humanity, humor, and insight to burn. Author Dan Barden takes the clay of the California hard-boiled novel and shapes it into something new.

If the storytellers told it true, all stories would end in death.

Any time you have poverty, joblessness, sub-par public schools, and a lack of opportunity, you're going to have a high rate of crime.

Top-shelf fiction, a Crown Royal ride into the heart of Night and New York. Con Lehane's work is reminiscent of the best of Lawrence Block, which is to say that this is very good stuff, indeed.

We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep.

We couldn't have known - who could've predicted what happened in American politics in the 2016? The rise of racism again, or the peeling back of the onion and seeing racism again, was a bit of a surprise in the last couple years.

In Europe, I'm recognized on the street sometimes. And that's cool, because I don't have to live there and deal with it every day. Unless you're Stephen King - a great writer, by the way, and anyone who says different knows nothing about the craft - you're more likely to be recognized in America if you play in a soap opera than if you're a novelist.

Things seem to be at a boiling point all the time. In fact, it has been that way my whole life. I find it interesting, and I like the fact that the emotions are in your face all the time. You always know where you stand. None of that "we don't have any racial problems here" attitude that you get, say, up north. All of this is rich fodder for a crime novelist.

Soon it began to drizzle for the second time that night. The drops grew heavier and became visible in the headlights of the cars. It was said by some of the police on the scene that God was crying for the girl in the garden. To others, it was only rain.

The crime part is the engine that moves the narrative and allows me to write the other things I want to write about.

My name recognition has opened doors on the research side. I used to go into crack houses and drug markets and really bad neighborhoods by myself, routinely, and hang out. Sometimes I still do, because I don't want to attract attention. But lately, I've been riding with cops and gaining access to other types of law, like the ATF guys, just because of my name. I guess it's a smarter way to work.

We remember when women were spoken of differently. I don't mean that we didn't speak of women sexually - that happened. It was never this crude: there wasn't the connotations, the violence. I think there's got to be a relationship between the coarsening of the culture, of which pornography was a piece of the puzzle.

I'm proud to be a crime novelist. What I've chosen is the best way to convey the questions I'm trying to raise.

What's more interesting are the dynamics between people that involve hypocrisy or ignoring each other. That's what I want to write about. I like to make people uncomfortable because it's something we should be uncomfortable about.

The thirst for knowledge is like a piece of ass you know you shouldn't chase; in the end, you chase it just the same.

I'm a better writer now because I've worked very hard at getting better. My long-range goal will always be to write better books.

I don't believe that murders can be "solved." I think that this is the big lie of the mystery novel, that you should close the book and feel that the world is back in order and everything's all right. I want the reader to know that the world is not all right, and maybe we ought to do something about it.

I can write any kind of novel I want, any time, and sell it, but there's not that many people watching it. Even a low-rated TV show is a couple million more people than read my books. You want to be read, in essence. If you're a television writer, you're a writer and you want people to read your stuff. You're still reaching a bigger audience, that way. That's a philosophical way to look at it.

The reason some crime writers have a chip on their shoulder about the label is because their good books are shelved beside books about nuns and birdwatchers and cats who solve crimes. Overseas, my books are reviewed alongside those of authors like Robert Stone and Don DeLillo, and I have to live and die by that comparison. They don't ghettoize crime writers in other countries, and of course they shouldn't.

But when I do book signings and personal appearances, the audiences are mostly white. Growing up here, I expected that and understand it. Black audiences won't come out for a white writer for the most part. It really is just a fact of life.