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I have fun writing. I don't make it a chore. I don't have to struggle with 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.
Chore
Chores
Fun
Struggle
Writing
Make

More quotes by Elmore Leonard

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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. I can't believe it when writers tell me 'I don't want to show my work to anybody'.
Elmore Leonard
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Try not to write the parts that people skip.
Elmore Leonard
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It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.
Elmore Leonard
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There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees. And there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living.
Elmore Leonard
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Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
Elmore Leonard
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All the information you need can be given in dialogue.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
Elmore Leonard
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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
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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
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I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
Elmore Leonard
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I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.
Elmore Leonard
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I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
Elmore Leonard
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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
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Skip the boring parts.
Elmore Leonard
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What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
Elmore Leonard