Top 41 David Morrell Quotes
#1. If you chase the market, it's not going to come to you. You have to have faith in yourself. I think one of the differences in what I call 'civilians' and 'authors' is that we have an antenna hat buzzing all the time.
David Morrell
#3. " ... What if?" Through the alchemy of those two words, something new comes into the world.
David Morrell
#4. He was a God who observed without intervening in this hell he created"
-Carlisle
David Morrell
#5. My son died from cancer. My granddaughter died from cancer. I have a lot of reasons to think that reality is not a friendly neighborhood. And the stories that I tell distract me, and if I do the job right, they distract people from things that are happening to them that they wish had never happened.
David Morrell
#6. One generation's idea of fast pace might be different from a later generation's.
David Morrell
#7. A thriller becomes great when it carries a feeling of reality and truth.
David Morrell
#8. La Griffe, "The Claw." Simple and small. The index finger goes through the hole near the blade. Favored by climbers and boaters.
David Morrell
#9. His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.
David Morrell
#10. Except that it was no more home, just the place where he had grown up, and that first day back, touring the once familiar places only made him realize that he had already lived close to half his life.
David Morrell
#11. Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.
David Morrell
#12. Some people might be surprised that 'Rambo's creator has a doctorate in American literature. One of my influences is Henry James, whose major theme is awareness. Whether I'm writing about military personnel, law enforcement, or De Quincey, the persistent theme is paying attention in a hostile world.
David Morrell
#13. When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'
David Morrell
#14. Sometimes life kicks you in the teeth with an irony that a self-respecting fiction writer would be ashamed to invent.
David Morrell
#15. He strode with the weight of robbed innocence and a stolen childhood, for a life time of pain and anger, of terror and death."
- Frank Balenger
David Morrell
#16. It's not polite to pass out when you've got company. Conversation,
David Morrell
#17. In my novel, 'First Blood,' Rambo died. In the films, he lives.
David Morrell
#18. Cavanaugh's knife, Ernest Emerson's CQC-7W. The hook at the top opens the blade as the knife is drawn from a pocket.
David Morrell
#19. My world view is that it can all go to hell in an instant, and you have to be ready for it. That's pretty much the central theme running through my work. It's about people's awareness of how uncertain life can be and their trying to guard against that.
David Morrell
#20. On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it?
David Morrell
#21. There are no inferior types of fiction, only inferior practitioners
of them
David Morrell
#22. People who know various movie versions don't really know the story.
David Morrell
#23. The trouble with instant gratification is, it takes too long.
David Morrell
#24. As long as thriller authors teach us about our world, they'll be relevant.
David Morrell
#25. The flaw of an amateur is to assume what's in our head is what's on the page.
David Morrell
#26. First Blood Rambo knife by Jimmy Lile. It features a saw, a guard with straight and Philips screwdriver heads, holes in the guard for a wrist lanyard,
David Morrell
#27. Remember that just because major publishing is having trouble, that doesn't mean people have stopped reading books. Printed books won't go away, but ebooks won't go away, either.
David Morrell
#28. Learn to respect a craftsman's talent, to realize that a task done well seems easy but is terribly difficult.
David Morrell
#29. Writers need to be tough. This is not for the weak of will. And we have to realize that, yeah, it's never good enough. It's not like fixing a car where it's precise and we know what the end result will be definitively.
David Morrell
#30. A knife slash with a sharp blade almost never caused pain unless delivered with force. As the skin parted, there was only a stinging sensation. Spinning,
David Morrell
#31. His blank face communicated an emptiness that could never be filled"
- Frank Balenger
David Morrell
#32. He showed his love and determination by burning her BMW and strangling her cat, then
David Morrell
#33. When I started 'First Blood,' back in 1968, I was deeply influenced by Geoffrey Household's 'Rogue Male.'
David Morrell
#34. The posters and rock-star buttons and banners were valueless without the perspective of the mind that had attached significance to them. Souvenirs have no worth without nostalgia, after all. They're meaningless if a memory isn't linked to them.
David Morrell
#35. We act upon assumptions that control our view of reality, even though reality might be quite different ... By definition, what is unthinkable isn't part of our reality ... your assumptions about what is possible prevent you from accurately seeing the reality before you.
David Morrell
#36. Your obligation as writers is to distinguish yourself. ... The ultimate result should be a book that you write that no one else could have written.
David Morrell
#37. At their best, thrillers not only entertain. Ideally they also reflect the society in which they are set, analyzing our fears and how we perceive the world.
David Morrell
#38. Anybody who sits down to write, and they think 'thriller,' maybe shouldn't be thinking that way. Maybe we should be thinking 'novel,' maybe 'thriller' way in the background, but that these are real people to whom things are happening. It just happens to be a hell of an exciting story.
David Morrell
#39. A thriller must be thrilling. A mystery may or may not be a thriller depending on how much breathless emotion it has, as opposed to cerebral calculation.
David Morrell
#40. You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer.
David Morrell
#41. As much as I like it when a book I'm writing speeds along, the downside can be that an author becomes too eager to finish and rushes the end. The end is even more important than the first page, and rushing can damage it.
David Morrell
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