Top 100 Quotes About Elmore Leonard
#1. I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader - I have seen everything from the sublime to the ridiculous by her bed, from Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard to Barbara Cartland and James Patterson) taking me to get my library card when I was four and not yet at school.
John Niven
#2. I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition.
Mark Billingham
#3. When you translate the American writers who are best with dialogue into German - someone like Elmore Leonard, or Tom Wolfe, who's also quite good with dialogue. It's very hard to translate them well.
Daniel Kehlmann
#4. For pleasure, I'll read military sf, or Elmore Leonard capers, anything that's fast and fun. Otherwise, I mostly pick at books, without any clear focus.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#5. Let it Ride channels Elmore Leonard at the height of his powers, with dialogue Quentin Tarantino would kill for.
Ken Bruen
#6. Like Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake and Robert B. Parker and oh so many others, I want to die with my boots on, facedown on my keyboard if possible, in the middle of a sentence.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
#7. Leave out the parts readers tend to skip. (Elmore Leonard)
First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for money. (Moliere)
Jan Shapin
#8. If Elmore Leonard met Jim Thompson down a dark alley at midnight they might emerge a week later with thick beards, bloodshot eyes and the manuscript for THE BIG O.
Eoin Colfer
#9. I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie.
Quentin Tarantino
#10. Elmore Leonard famously said that a story is real life with the boring parts left out.
Lisa Cron
#11. I'm a big fan of Elmore Leonard, and I've read Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre and so on. But I'd never read a crime novel that made me feel emotional at the end.
John Gordon Sinclair
#12. Like Richard Price and the late, great Elmore Leonard, Matt Burgess is one of those cool, quick and funny writers who can turn a seemingly routine crime caper into something special.
Carl Hiaasen
#13. If a man must make excuses for himself, continually argue with himself that he is a man, then he is better off dead.
Elmore Leonard
#14. Quiet and calculating. He hasn't changed that much since. Always mild-mannered, the nice guy - until someone steps over the line and challenges him.
Elmore Leonard
#15. Never open a book with weather. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
Elmore Leonard
#18. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.
Elmore Leonard
#19. I never see my bad guys as simply bad. They want pretty much the same thing that you and I want: they want to be happy.
Elmore Leonard
#20. I do have fun writing, and a long time ago, I told myself, 'You got to have fun at this, or it'll drive you nuts.'
Elmore Leonard
#21. I don't believe in writer's block. I don't know what that is. There are just certain little areas that I know I'm going to get through. It's just a matter of finding a way.
Elmore Leonard
#22. Late in the afternoon the sky changed to pale gray and there was rain in the air, the atmosphere close and stifling, and a silence clung heavily to the flat colorless plain.
Elmore Leonard
#23. A wife's faithful to her husband, subject to him. It's in the bible.
Elmore Leonard
#24. In the light of eternity, is it better to sell out and ride or stand up and walk?
Elmore Leonard
#25. If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.
Elmore Leonard
#26. I used to be able to write five pages a day, every day, no problem. Now a good day is five or four pages, and that's from 9:30 A.M. until 6 P.M.
Elmore Leonard
#27. If I have several bad guys and I only want to end up with one of them, then I have to decide which one I want in the end. And normally it's the one who is the most interesting talker.
Elmore Leonard
#28. And she thought if you don't have the desire to fight or wait for something there's no reason for being on earth.
Elmore Leonard
#29. I left advertising as fast as I could in 1961. And I haven't ever thought about going back.
Elmore Leonard
#30. Yeah, ESP," Juvenal said. "You know how you do it? You listen to the other person instead of thinking of what you're gonna say next. That's all, and you learn things.
Elmore Leonard
#31. A: Anyone who looks like she does has to be somebody ...
B: What does she look like?
A: An ice cream. I had a spoon I would have eaten her.
Elmore Leonard
#33. When I get an idea for a book, something appeals to me, it's usually a character. I'll see a picture of a female marshal in front of the courthouse in Miami and she's got a shotgun on her hip and it goes up on an angle. And she's good-looking. And I say, 'I've got to use her.'
Elmore Leonard
#34. There were a lot of terms you had to learn, as opposed to the shylock business where all you had to know how to say was 'Give me the fuckin money.
Elmore Leonard
#35. Writers - all writers, even screenwriters - like to make their mark. I don't think many screenwriters can write. They pass as writers.
Elmore Leonard
#36. "Wonderful things can happen", Vincent said, "when you plant seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes."
Elmore Leonard
#37. People ask me, 'Why are you still writing books?' Like I'm still only writing to make money and as soon as I have enough I'll quit and go fishing? I like to write books. It's the most satisfying thing I do.
Elmore Leonard
#38. If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.
Elmore Leonard
#39. You never know what somebody might tell you,' Chris said, 'when they think you're somebody else.
Elmore Leonard
#40. I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.
Elmore Leonard
#41. There's nothing like work to take your mind off your worries.
Elmore Leonard
#42. I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
Elmore Leonard
#43. I think any writer is a fool if he doesn't do it for money. There needs to be some kind of incentive in addition to the project. It all goes together. It's fun to sit there and think of characters and get them into action, then be paid for it.
Elmore Leonard
#44. It's like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there's this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it.
Elmore Leonard
#45. Writing screenplays is not my business. I've written half a dozen, and maybe half of those were made. But it was never a satisfying experience. It was just work. You're an employee. You would be told what to do. Studio execs would cross out my dialogue and put in their dialogue.
Elmore Leonard
#46. She wondered what he looked like with his hat off and wondered again if he knew he was funny.
Elmore Leonard
#47. My purpose is to entertain and please myself. I feel that if I am entertained, then there will be enough other readers who will be entertained, too.
Elmore Leonard
#48. I can write anywhere. But I don't use a computer, and I could never write on a laptop. I hate the sound of computers; it's too dull, like it's not doing anything for you.
Elmore Leonard
#49. I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.
Elmore Leonard
#50. Not dreams but night changes, not destiny but path changes, always keep your hopes alive, luck may or may not change, but time definitely chages.
Elmore Leonard
#51. Bad guys are not bad guys twenty-four hours a day.
Elmore Leonard
#52. Avoid Prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword.
Elmore Leonard
#53. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.
Elmore Leonard
#54. Sometimes female characters start out as the wife or girlfriend, but then I realize, 'No, she's the book,' and she becomes a main character. I surrender the book to her.
Elmore Leonard
#55. When people ask me about my dialogue, I say, 'Don't you hear people talking?' That's all I do. I hear a certain type of individual, I decide this is what he should be, whatever it is, and then I hear him. Well, I don't hear anybody that I can't make talk.
Elmore Leonard
#56. There are some people who have been reading me for years, and they keep saying kind things about the writing. That's what you're writing for, to get people to respond to it.
Elmore Leonard
#57. I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it ... Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don't you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.
Elmore Leonard
#58. You thinkin bout the time I shot you and you rose from the dead? It only happens once in your life." He turned to Carol again and she said:
"Were you actually aiming at his hat?"
"I hit it didn't I?
Elmore Leonard
#59. She said very quietly, "Mitch?" "What?" "There's somebody downstairs." "I know there is.
Elmore Leonard
#60. He saw Harvey and Edgar catch each other's eye as he looked off toward the strains of "Alley Cat," Jesus, hoping they'd rush it faster than the others or he'd have to get out of here. It was the only song he knew that made him want to break something.
Elmore Leonard
#62. I don't judge in my books. I don't have to have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It's just how it comes out. I'm just telling a story.
Elmore Leonard
#63. I won't read a book that starts with a description of the weather. I don't read books over 300 pages, though I'll make an exception for Don Delillo.
Elmore Leonard
#64. I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.
Elmore Leonard
#65. I decided to write Westerns because there was a terrific market for Westerns in the '50s. There were a lot of pulp magazines, like 'Dime Western' and '10 Story Western' that were still being published. The better ones paid two cents a word. And I thought, 'I like Westerns.'
Elmore Leonard
#66. He called out to no one in particular, Fire in the Hole!
Elmore Leonard
#67. When you're really cute that's all you have to be, you make a career out of it. someone asks you what you do, you say, 'nothing. i'm cute.
Elmore Leonard
#68. A pen connects you to the paper. It definitely matters.
Elmore Leonard
#69. I don't get in a position to be frightened. I don't do anything dangerous, and I always pay my bills.
Elmore Leonard
#70. At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.
Elmore Leonard
#72. To me, writing is the most fun. It's not always fun, but finally when you make it come out the way you want, it's then you can say, 'It's fun, boy.'
Elmore Leonard
#73. I think the best advice I give is to try not to write. Try not to overwrite, try not to make it sound too good. Just use your own voice. Use your own style of putting it down.
Elmore Leonard
#74. I'm not aware of a cadence when writing, but I hear it after. I write in longhand, and that helps. You're closer to it, and you have to cross things out. You put a line through it, but it's still there. You might need it. When you erase a line on a computer, it's gone forever.
Elmore Leonard
#75. I don't have any of the modern stuff. I don't have e-mail. I don't have a computer!
Elmore Leonard
#76. The personality and the ego scream, while the soul whispers.
Elmore Leonard
#77. Write the book the way it should be written, then give it to somebody to put in the commas and shit.
Elmore Leonard
#78. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.
Elmore Leonard
#79. There are 500 million people on Facebook, but what are they saying to each other? Not much.
Elmore Leonard
#80. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.
Elmore Leonard
#81. I thought I explained it to you. Boyd and I dug coal together.
Elmore Leonard
#82. God is God and He lets things happen and that's all there is to it. But He has reasons, and His reasons for something happening would be more important than a man's reason for questioning whatever it might
Elmore Leonard
#83. He watched the eternity of the sky. The dark was restful, but the vastness was cold and made you draw something close to you.
Elmore Leonard
#85. The truth is that the writers who most influenced me weren't people categorized as crime writers. I'd say I learned more from John O'Hara, who isn't much read today but whose short stories I really admired, and Hemingway, who I think has lasted pretty good.
Elmore Leonard
#86. To me, a book is a book, an electronic device is not, and love of books was the reason I started writing.
Elmore Leonard
#87. All the information you need can be given in dialogue.
Elmore Leonard
#88. My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
Elmore Leonard
#89. Bones turned a page, read down the entries and stopped.
"You got a miss. Guy's six weeks over."
"He died," Chili said.
"How you know he died, he tell you.
Elmore Leonard
#90. I get letters. I get several a week, I think. A lot of people want a picture, a lot of people just want an autograph.
Elmore Leonard
#91. Boyd looked at him now like he was trying to decide something in his mind.
"You'd shoot me, you get the chance?"
"You make me pull," Raylan said, "I'll put you down.
Elmore Leonard
#92. My characters have to talk, or they're out. They audition in early scenes. If they can't talk, they're given less to do, or thrown out.
Elmore Leonard
#93. I don't believe in writer's block or waiting for inspiration. If you're a writer, you sit down and write.
Elmore Leonard
#94. Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said' ... he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.
Elmore Leonard
#95. A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now.
Elmore Leonard
#96. Do you want me to tell you what I give a shit about at age sixty-five', Cullen said, 'and what I don't give a shit about?'
(page 262)
Elmore Leonard
#97. Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.
Elmore Leonard
#98. Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose.'
Elmore Leonard
#99. Tony was a lawyer, so you had to accept the fact he was opinionated and full of shit.
Elmore Leonard
#100. What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.
Elmore Leonard
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