Elliott Colla Quotes

Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have read in Arabic.

The corruption in Iraq has nothing to do with ideas - it has to do with the regime and institutional structures and power.

The one thing that is braver each day than I is my sense of self-preservation It moves not, and stands not, unless it is driven by something

Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference.

Noir is where the clarity of moral divisions break down, the black and whites turn into grays.

Once you have the first draft it's living, and you can coax it to grow and trim it and reshape it and so on. But get that first draft.

There's actually a lot of information on a lot of people and that is a major achievement of a police state.

It does not take much to imagine the humanity of people you don't know.

I think if I'd gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.

When you're writing your own fiction, you don't have to ride two horses.