Patrick DeWitt Quotes

The reason I like Portland is the idea of going to a supermarket and knowing there's no way to be recognized. L.A. is so social.

Love is dangerous; it's not something to be trifled with. As good as it feels on the way in, it feels that much worse on the way out.

and that Eli, is how you got your freckles

Come with me into the world and reclaim your independence. You stand to gain so much, and riches are the least of it.

I don't suppose I have a choice.'
'As with so many things in a life, brother, I don't suppose you do.

Some wear greed as a fine suit of clothes. But you, my son, bear its stamp ever more poorly.

Let us look within ourselves and search out the dormant warrior." "Mine is dormant to the point of non-existence, sir.

Beware of the plygs of Colorado City, Arizona. They have no cups of coffee for the likes of you.

Working in a bar was a horrific idea for me.

I was halfway through a rough draft of 'The Sisters Brothers' when it came time to start the 'Terri' adaptation.

I sighed. 'It doesn't matter what we do. Money comes and goes.' I shook my head. 'It doesn't matter and you know it doesn't.

Things I had come to find humor in would make your honest man swoon.

All you will get from me is death.

I saw my bulky person in the windows of the passing storefronts and wondered, when will that man there find himself to be loved?

I haven't read a lot of Westerns. But I wrote a Western. The influences were all cinematic.

Often the starting point for characters, for me, is finding a little, most minor detail, and I'll go from there.

I felt like love has been underrepresented - unironic love, just actually really falling in love.

I find the constant upkeep of the body woefully fatiguing, don't you?

Work will drive you crazy if you let it.

I will admit he is unusual, but that is perhaps the closest I could come to complimenting him.

I've fallen in love in my life a few times. It's the most exciting part of being alive - that I've experienced, anyway.

Bernie Madoff is probably more nuanced then I'm giving him credit for, but I just couldn't get under his skin.

There is nothing typical about my profession.' Suddenly I did not want to talk about it any longer. 'I don't want to talk about it any longer.

You will know it, Charlie, if my burden becomes unbearable. You will know it and so will he.

The initial spark, your affection for the characters, all those things can disappear. It's a perilous thing.

I am a homebody, something that lends itself to my profession.

There is a feeling here, which if it gets you, will envenom your very center. It is a madness of possibilities.

I cannot understand the motivation of a bully, is what it is; this is the one thing that makes me unreasonable. I

I am a bit prudish, I think. It's hard for me to write about sex, and I don't really care to read about it, either.

He blinks and says that there are two types of people: Those who want to cry, and those who are crying already and want to stop.

You put a wage behind something, it gives the act a sort of respectability.

Lies can be wonderful things, and when a lie is told artfully, if it's done with a degree of craftsmanship, I can't help but admire the liar.

Hurried business is bad business.

Unfunny people should be locked up, the key tossed into a smelter.

When you sleep, your dreams are those of a dullard

When you meet someone you love, whether or not they love you back, something occurs in you that makes you want to improve yourself.

I know a lot of people who use the Internet really wisely. It enriches their lives in some way.

I had no plan to write a western novel, and when I realized it was happening, I was pretty surprised by it. But you have to go with what feels right.

That is to say, nine dead beavers in a line on the sand. There was something decorative about this, but also ominous or forbidding.

Just your everyday grouping of civilized gentlemen, sitting in a round robin to discuss the events of the day with quivering erections.

I'm not an enormous proponent of plot as a reader. It's about other things; my reading has become specialized over the years.

I don't know that happy people are interesting to write about - or to read about.

Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?' he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, 'It is a hundred dollars.

I will never be a leader of men, and neither do I want to be one, and neither do I want to be led. I thought: I want to lead only myself.

Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.

It is a glory and a torment.

I wouldn't want to write a biography of anyone. I'd feel too inhibited by the facts and too much pressure to do the subject's life justice.

I felt a premonitory concern they would never revisit it.

I have a paranoia that 'Ablutions' is the best thing I'll ever do.

when I see you, I feel the same. It is when I am away that I lose myself.

My first book didn't even have a Canadian publisher. And that upset me, because I so wanted a readership up there.

It would seem to me that the solitude of working in the wilds is not healthy for a man.

'The Sisters Brothers' started out as a little bit of dialogue between these two men who became Eli and Charlie Sisters.

He is not bad, I don't think. Perhaps he is simply too lazy to be good.

The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know.

Why were you feeling low?' 'Why does anyone? It creeps up on you from time to time.

The impetus for 'The Sisters Brothers' was it occurred to me that there was no neurosis in westerns, or there's a minimal amount of it.

I thought, Perhaps a man is never meant to be truly happy. Perhaps there is no such a thing in our world, after all. As

Feeling my middle section, which is and always has been bountiful, I said I did not think I would fit in the small

His heart was a church of his own choosing,
and the lights came through
the colourful windows.

I haven't read hardly any Westerns, to tell you the truth.

I kept trying to write these books that were sort of outside of my realm, and I kept failing.

I understand the desire to write and read about the death of publishing. It's a perversely and universally appealing topic.

The idea is this: It's important to upset one's work habits, to topple the cart for each project.

I don't know that I'd call myself an optimist.

All I know, boy, is that life is, on occasion, entirely too vast for my tastes.

It is true, I thought. I am living a life.

I'm done talking about your horse, Eli.' 'If you think it will not come up again, you are mistaken.

He makes good time for a hysterical man on foot.

The hardest thing in the world for a writer is to amass a readership. So many good books come out, and so many good books disappear.

If you're not riddled with doubt, you've probably done something wrong.

Every industry has slack times, and everyone has bad days at work.

When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble.

This marked the end of our toothbrush conversation.

I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.

You always bring God into arguments you know you're losing, for the liar is lonely, and welcomes all manner of company.

He wandered here and there over rolling hills.
He never saw the ocean but
dreamed of it often enough.

I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence.

'The Sisters Brothers' has endeared so many prize juries because the Western format has more of a broad appeal and is familiar to readers.

I don't necessarily want to make people stomp and clap. I simply want to engage people.

My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.

We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.

He only wished to fight and cultivate an anger toward me, thus alleviating his guilt, but I would not abet him in this.

It is hard to find a friend,' I said. 'It is the hardest thing in this world,' he agreed.

She wasn't precisely sure what she was walking toward but she wouldn't have turned around for the world.

Certain writers look down their noses at plot, and I think I might have been one of them until I tried it.

Looking around, I saw so many unhappy adults, people who loathed their jobs, and I didn't want to be one of them.

I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.

Where is your mother, Charlie asked. Dead. I'm sorry to hear that Thank you. But she was always dead.

I almost vomited in the boot! I was just about to vomit in the boot! Can you imagine how upset I would have been?

Our blood is the same, we just use it differently.

I'm either enjoying myself or I'm not. And if I'm not enjoying myself, something's gone terribly wrong.

It's healthy to have interests besides books.