Author: Donald Westlake

Cites

• NULL (1)
  • IN: The Busy Body (1966) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: If anyone shall dig up and plunder a buried corpse he shall be outlawed until he comes to an agreement with the relatives of the dead man, and they ask that he be allowed to come among men again.
    FROM: The Salic Law, (500), Legal Document, Netherlands/Belgium
• Charles Lamb (1)
  • IN: The Busy Body (1966) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.
    FROM: Letter to Robert Southey, (1815), Letter, UK
• Noël Coward (1)
  • IN: Get Real (2009) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Television isn’t something you watch. Television is something you appear on.
    FROM: NULL, (1956), Interview, UK
• John Heywood (1)
  • IN: Two Much! (1975) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: for the mistress of Adams’ Apple, who knows why Two heads are better than one.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, UK
• Henry James (1)
  • IN: The Ax (1997) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The old superstition about fiction being "wicked" has doubtless died out in England, but the spirit of it lingers in a certain oblique regard directed toward any story which does not more or less admit that it is only a joke. Even the most jocular novel feels in some degree the weight of the proscription that was formerly directed against literary levity: the jocularity does not always succeed in passing for orthodoxy. It is still expected, though perhaps people are ashamed to say it, that a production which is after all only a 'make-believe' (for what else is a 'story'?) shall be in some degree apologetic — shall renounce the pretension of attempting really to represent life. This, of course, any sensible, wide-awake story declines to do, for it quickly perceives that the tolerance granted to it on such a condition is only an attempt to stifle it disguised in the form of generosity. The old evangelical hostility to the novel, which was as explicit as it was narrow, and which regarded it as little less favourable to our immortal part than a stage-play, was in reality far less insulting. The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
    FROM: The Art of Fiction, (1888), Book, US/England
• Thomas G. Labrecque (1)
  • IN: The Ax (1997) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: If you're doing what you think is right for everyone involved, then you're fine. So I'm fine.
    FROM: CEO Chase Manhattan Bank, (1996), Conversation, US
• Friedrich Nietszche (1)
  • IN: The Hot Rock (1970) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The criminal is the type of the strong man in unfavorable surroundings, the strong man made sick.
    FROM: Twilight of the Idols, (1889), Book, Germany