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I never really thought I'd be successful. I never though I'd get books published, but this was something completely beyond me. The fact that it happened is wonderful, but it is not something that I was aiming for.

Walter Mosley

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Walter Mosley
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: January 12
Actor
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Walter Ellis Mosley
Though
Aiming
Fact
Published
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Completely
Thought
Beyond
Book
Wonderful
Something
Successful
Really
Books
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More quotes by Walter Mosley

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The biggest misconception that people have about the literary life is the romance of it. That a writer has this large world available to him or her of people, of ideas, of experiences, of interchange of ideas...
Walter Mosley
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HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall'.
Walter Mosley
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We born dyin'...But you ask a man an' he talk like he gonna live forevah.
Walter Mosley
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It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world was talking about how to keep a budget.
Walter Mosley
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I have never thought that I have sacrificed anything being a writer. That might not be true, maybe I have sacrificed something. Maybe I've given something up, but I can't think of it.
Walter Mosley
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People don't understand how hard it is to get recognized, how hard it is to get people to read your books. How hard it is to get people to even to understand what they're reading when they're talking to you about their books.
Walter Mosley
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At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.
Walter Mosley
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That's how powerful you are, girl...You pretty, but pretty alone is not what people see. You the kinda pretty, the kinda beauty, that's like a mirror. Men and women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they can't bear to see you go.
Walter Mosley
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I think of writers as explorers, not necessarily as detectives. So there is certainly detecting that is going on - they're explorers.
Walter Mosley
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The way I write is this: I write about a thousand words a day, a little bit more. The next morning, I read those thousand words and cursorily edit that. Then I write the next thousand. I do that all the way to the end of the book and then I reread the book quite a few times, editing as go through.
Walter Mosley
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Susan Straight finds LA's secret heart in Between Heaven and Here and with a sleight of hand only the masters have, she creates an alley, a neighborhood, a history that is as rich and tragic as any Shakespearean tale.
Walter Mosley
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A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him
Walter Mosley
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Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.
Walter Mosley
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My job is writing for people to enjoy and then writing about a broader and a deeper world.
Walter Mosley
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I'm just a survivor from the train wreck of the modern world.
Walter Mosley
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Literature is the adventure. It's the story, it's the fight, it's people falling in love, it's people with deep personality disorders who succeed anyway beyond themselves. That's what great literature is.
Walter Mosley
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The fear in my heart was like in one of those dreams where you try to run but you can't do it, you can't run because the fear is an anchor in your chest.
Walter Mosley
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There's many things that I am. And all of those things come together at some point. If somebody wants to limit me, you know and they'll say, 'Well, this is Walter Mosley, the mystery writer.' I don't like that. Because I do many things.
Walter Mosley
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All of the philosophers I studied were white (with a few Eastern exceptions), and, for that matter, they were all male. Africa, the cradle of civilization, seemed to have no footing in the highest form of human thought.
Walter Mosley
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I used to worry about money and career and what was going to happen. How was I gonna succeed or fail in the world? And I thought about it enough that I'm no longer worried about it. I'm not... I don't worry about what's gonna happen in my life. I don't worry about telling me about dying, my own mortality. That's a given.
Walter Mosley