Elmore Leonard Want Quotations

I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.

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.

I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.

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.

I want the reader to know what's going on. So there's never a mystery in my books.