Donald E. Westlake
Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008) was one of the most prolific and talented authors of American crime fiction. He began his career in the late 1950's, churning out novels for pulp houses—often writing as many as four novels a year under various pseudonyms such as Richard Stark—but soon began publishing under his own name. His most well-known characters were John Dortmunder, an unlucky thief, and Parker, a ruthless criminal. His writing earned him three Edgar Awards: the 1968 Best Novel award for God Save the Mark; the 1990 Best Short Story award for "Too Many Crooks"; and the 1991 Best Motion Picture Screenplay award for The Grifters. In addition, Westlake also earned a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.
Westlake's cinematic prose and brisk dialogue made his novels attractive to Hollywood, and several motion pictures were made from his books, with stars such as Lee Marvin and Mel Gibson. Westlake wrote several screenplays himself, receiving an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of The Grifters, Jim Thompson's noir classic.
Some of the pseudonyms he used include
• Richard Stark
• Timothy J. Culver
• Tucker Coe
• Curt Clark
• J. Morgan Cunningham
• Judson Jack Carmichael
• D.E. Westlake
• Donald I. Vestlejk
• Don Westlake
“Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten.”
“Story ideas had never been a problem for him, there'd always been more ideas than time to write them, he'd reject one perfectly good notion because he fell more simpatico toward a different one. But of course he could never go back to any of those ancient story stubs, they wouldn't still have juice in them.For him, creating a novel was like gardening; you choose your seed, you treat it exactly the way the package says, and gradually a thing of beauty - or of sturdiness, or of nutrition - grows up and becomes yours. The seed you don't nurture doesn't wait to be doted over later; it shrivels and dies.”
“It was apparent...that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong.”
“What advice I would give to anybody about anything. Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering." (When asked in an interview about what question he's tired of being asked.)”
“A lady doctor in the foreground, black horn-rims and white lab coat, suddenly cried, “You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Do you realize what you're doing to the reality concepts we're trying to instill in these people? How do you expect them to differentiate between illusion and reality when you do something like this?””
“My mother believed in all superstitions, plus she made some up.”