The Getaway Car Quotes

“Take John Carroll, perhaps the only man ever to break both out of and into prison. In the twenties, Carroll and his wife, Mabel, were known throughout the Midwest as the Millionaire Bandits. Eventually captured and convicted, John Carroll was sentenced to Leavenworth while Mabel was imprisoned at the women’s reformatory at Leeds. At that time, in 1927, Leavenworth was still thought”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Mr. Ripley’s Return”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Ace paperback science fiction novel called Anarchaos by Curt Clark, a fat political suspenser called Ex Officio by Timothy J. Culver (paperback title, Power Play), a children’s book called Philip by D. E. Westlake, and a Hailey-type parody called Comfort Station by the vibrant J. Morgan Cunningham. The pen names are simple brand names, used to differentiate the types of books. I don’t mind owning up to them.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Ray Broekel was working on his nonfiction book about chocolate candy, The Chocolate Chronicles,”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Almost. There was one more, in December of 1962, called The Box (the only Rabe novel published with a Rabe title). The Box may be Rabe’s finest work, a novel of character and of place, and in it Rabe managed to use and integrate more of his skills and techniques”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Nineteen-sixty was also when a penny-ante outfit called Abelard-Schuman published in hardcover Anatomy of a Killer, a novel Gold Medal had rejected, I can’t think why. It’s third person, as cold and as clean as a knife, and this time the ghostly unemotional killer,”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“And next, published in May of 1960, Rabe’s sixteenth Gold Medal novel in exactly five years, was Murder Me for Nickels, yet another change of pace, absolutely unlike anything that he had done before. Told in first person by Jack St. Louis, right-hand man of Walter Lippit, the local jukebox king, Murder Me”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Time Enough to Die is the last of the Port novels and the first of Rabe’s final cluster of five excellent books. The second of these, My Lovely Executioner, is another total change of pace, and a fine absorbing novel.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Rabe followed this with Time Enough to Die, the last of the Daniel Port novels—whew!—and the only good one.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“With his twelfth book, Blood on the Desert, Rabe gets his second wind, goes for a complete change of pace, and produces his first fully satisfying work since Kill the Boss Goodbye. It’s”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Murder Me for Nickels. Kill the Boss Goodbye. Why would anybody ever want to read a book called Kill the Boss Goodbye? And yet, Kill the Boss Goodbye”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“. Then I found myself toying with pomposities like The Time of the Hero, but my feeling is, if the title is too boring to read all the way through, it might keep readers from trying the novel. So Kahawa it is. The original publisher of Kahawa, in 1982, was in the midst of an upheaval. My original editor was let go before publication, to be replaced with an oil painting of an editor; pleasant, even comforting to look at, but not much help in the trenches. The publisher moved by fits and starts—more fits than starts, actually—and though the book received good reviews, no one at the publishing house seemed able to figure out how to suggest that anybody might enjoy reading it. So it didn’t do well. My current publisher is not suffering upheavals, my current editor is lively and professional, and when it was suggested that Kahawa might be given a second chance of life, I was both astonished and very pleased. I’ve made minor changes in the text, nothing substantive, and agreed to write this introduction, and here we are, by golly, airborne again. By coincidence, I ran into that oil painting at a party a few months ago. He said, “Are you writing any more African adventure novels?” “No,” I said, “but Warner is going to put out Kahawa again, in hardcover.” His jaw dropped. “Why?” he asked. (This is what we have to put up with, sometimes.) “I think they like it,” I said. I hope you do, too.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“halfway through a one-thousand-two-hundred-page book called The Permanent Way, by M. F. Hill, which”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“The Hoke Mosely series by Charles Willeford The Red Right Hand by Joel Townsley Rogers Kill the Boss Goodbye by Peter Rabe The Gravedigger/Coffin Ed series by Chester Himes The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett Interface by Joe Gores The Eighth Circle by Stanley Ellin Sleep and His Brother by Peter Dickinson The Light of Day by Eric Ambler”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Science Fiction. I have sold thirteen stories, two of which have not yet been published and none of which are any damn good. I have sold to Universe, Original, Future, Super, Analog, Amazing, If, and Galaxy. A fourteenth story was sold to Fantastic Universe, which proceeded to drop dead before they could publish it. Both John Campbell and Cele Goldsmith have asked me to write sequels to novelettes of mine they had bought (I haven’t written either, and won’t). In a desk drawer I have twenty-odd thousand words of a science fiction novel, which is good, but which I’m not going to finish because it isn’t worth my while. Avalon pays three hundred and fifty dollars for a book, and I wouldn’t support such piracy either by writing for them or buying their wares. John Campbell isn’t the hero, so it can’t be serialized in Analog. If finished, it would run a lot longer than forty-five thousand words, so that leaves out Ace. There’s no gratuitous sex, so that excludes Galaxy/Beacon (or would if they were still being published). It isn’t a silly satire about a world controlled by advertising agencies or insurance companies or the A&P, so it can’t be serialized in Galaxy Magazine. It’s in sensible English, so Amazing is out. It isn’t about the horrors of Atomic War, so no mainstream hardcover house would look twice at it. I’d like to write it anyway for my own amusement (you know, like a real writer-type), but unpublished manuscripts unfortunately have a low enjoyment quota, at least for me. So the hell with it.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“The only Sixties mysteries with any merit at all were written in the Fifties by Chester Himes. On the”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“Craig Rice”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany

“When I met him, Don’s New York State driver’s license had been suspended; this happens when you’ve drawn enough speeding tickets, and he was always good at that. He wouldn’t have wanted a car anyway on West 46th Street, but that changed when he moved out to Canarsie. And the day came when the three-year suspension was up, and his license was restored. Whereupon he bought a car, and applied for insurance. And was astonished when the insurance company gave him a safe driver discount because he hadn’t had an accident or a speeding ticket in the past three years. There’s a word for that sort of thing. Westlakean.”
― Donald E. Westlake, The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany