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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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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.
Start
Show
Shows
Home
Live
Gillespie
Writing
Dizzy
Made
Immediately
Saws
More quotes by Elmore Leonard
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
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
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.
Elmore Leonard
I have fun writing. I don't make it a chore. I don't have to struggle with it.
Elmore Leonard
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
I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
Elmore Leonard
Skip the boring parts.
Elmore Leonard
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
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Elmore Leonard
Try not to write the parts that people skip.
Elmore Leonard
Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language.
Elmore Leonard
Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
Elmore Leonard
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Elmore Leonard
I still read Hemingway. I still read his short stories because they're so good. He doesn't waste any words.
Elmore Leonard
I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
Elmore Leonard
I don’t think writers compete, I think they’re all doing separate things in their own style.
Elmore Leonard
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
What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.
Elmore Leonard
If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.
Elmore Leonard
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
