Quote

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.

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.
Alive
Keep
Hopes
Night
Definitely
Dream
Luck
Change
Changes
May
Destiny
Always
Dreams
Time
Path

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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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I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
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If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.
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To me, a book is a book, an electronic device is not, and love of books was the reason I started writing.
Elmore Leonard
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Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said' . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.
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My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
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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.
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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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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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I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
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.
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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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It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.
Elmore Leonard
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Try not to write the parts that people skip.
Elmore Leonard
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If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Elmore Leonard
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Skip the boring parts.
Elmore Leonard
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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.
Elmore Leonard