Serial Killer Wesley Allan Dodd's Last Words

I was once asked by somebody, I don't remember who, if there was any way sex offenders could be stopped. I said no. I was wrong.

Wesley Allan Dodd, executed in the state of Washington on January 5, 1993. Per his request, he was hanged. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald On Drinking

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Difficulties of Being an Author

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.

Charles Caleb Colton, 2000

Converting One's Pen Into a Sword

Getting even is one great reason for writing.

William Gass, The Paris Review, 1977

Garrison Keillor on Humor

Humor needs to come in under cover of darkness, in disguise, and surprise people.

Garrison Keillor, The Paris Review, 1995

From Charles Duff's Classic "A Handbook on Hanging"

It has been, and still is, a matter of opinion whether, if you wish to kill your undesirable, it is better to let him die quietly in a concentration camp, flay him until he dies, hurl him over a precipice, burn, drown, or suffocate him; or entomb him alive and leave him to perish slowly in the silence of his grave; or asphyxiate him agonizingly in a lethal chamber, press him to death or cut off his head; or produce a sort of coma by means of an electric current that grills him in parts. It is all a matter of taste, temperament, and fashion.

Charles Duff (1894-1966) A Handbook On Hanging, 1961

A Writer Buried in Books

     I've decided that books are my enemy, though they used to be my great love. They are taking over. They crowd my dining room, they double up in the bedroom, they make the attic floor sag. We even have a library in the bathroom: shelves and shelves of books where a normal person might have a vanity table or piles of towels…

     I once went through our library and calculated that my husband and I had read about a third of the books that we own, and I think, as we buy more books and read a third of what we buy, that the statistic is more or less holding up. Sometimes we even buy a book and go to put it on one of our few organized shelves only to find that it is already there...

     We have a psychological problem and we recognize it: We never get rid of books…It's a sick relationship we have with these piles of pages between covers. Most people would be secretly bragging if they said this, but I'm not bragging. I think it's weird and demented. Maybe I'm so involved with my books' fate because I am a writer, and I can all too well imagine a reader taking one of my books and cosigning it to the trash heap.

Amy Wilentz, "One Book Out," The New York Times Book Review, August 4, 2013

Clues in Crime Fiction

     Investigation is the meat and potatoes of mystery fiction. The sleuth talks to people, does research, snoops around, and makes observations. Facts emerge. Maybe an eyewitness gives an account of what he saw. A wife has unexplained bruises on her face. The brother of a victim avoids eye contact with his questioner. A will leaves a millionaire's estate to an obscure charity. A bloody knife is found in a laundry bin. A love letter is discovered tucked into last week's newspaper.

     Some facts will turn out to be clues that lead to the killer's true identity. Some will turn out to be red herrings--evidence that leads in a false direction. On top of that, a lot of the information your sleuth notes will turn out to be nothing more than the irrelevant minutiae of everyday life inserted into scenes to give a sense of realism and camouflage the clues.

Hallie Ephron, Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel, 2005 

Read Before You Write

You really can't write unless you read. You have to know what the game is all about.

Harold Brodkey, The Paris Review, 1991

Quality Over Quantity

Writing is not a numbers game. You should focus more on reaching the hearts of readers and building fans more than publishing a plethora of books that no one may care about.

Selena Haskins, 1998