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If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.

Elmore Leonard

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Elmore Leonard
Age: 87 †
Born: 1925
Born: October 11
Died: 2013
Died: August 20
Author
Film Producer
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Dutch Leonard
Elmore John Leonard Jr.
Thing
Work
Good
Would
Rich

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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.
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Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language.
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If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
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Skip the boring parts.
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If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.
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I still read Hemingway. I still read his short stories because they're so good. He doesn't waste any words.
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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.
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What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.
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I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.
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There's nothing like work to take your mind off your worries.
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These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story.
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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.
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I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
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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.
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All the information you need can be given in dialogue.
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I focus on characters as individuals with attitudes and write each scene from a particular character's point of view. That way, even narrative passages take on the character's sound. I don't want the reader to be aware of me, writing.
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Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
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Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.
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Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
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Try not to write the parts that people skip.
Elmore Leonard