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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

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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.
Short
Read
Words
Doesn
Stories
Stills
Still
Hemingway
Good
Waste

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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Try not to write the parts that people skip.
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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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I have fun writing. I don't make it a chore. I don't have to struggle with it.
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There's nothing like work to take your mind off your worries.
Elmore Leonard
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I don’t think writers compete, I think they’re all doing separate things in their own style.
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Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language.
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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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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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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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It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.
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If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
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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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Skip the boring parts.
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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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