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My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite 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.
Like
Sums
Rewrite
Sounds
Rule
Sound
Important
Writing

More quotes by 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 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.
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All the information you need can be given in dialogue.
Elmore Leonard
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Bad guys are not bad guys twenty-four hours a day.
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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.
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I left advertising as fast as I could in 1961. And I haven't ever thought about going back.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
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 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'.
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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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I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
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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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There's nothing like work to take your mind off your worries.
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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Don't worry about what your mother thinks of your language.
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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I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
Elmore Leonard
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Try not to write the parts that people 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