Quotes for All
A lot of times, writers are told write as big as you can, and that’s not untrue. But at times I think it’s better to write as small as you can, to start scenes with little personal details or people who are doing average every day human things. That, to me, lets the average reader … Read more
It’s important to me that the reader goes on a ride with the characters, that you set context enough to know, “Okay, here’s where we are in the world. Now we’re just going to go inside this person’s head, this guy’s heart, this woman’s ambitions and take it down to very, very small scale.” Don … Read more
The Americans take a product that literally grows on trees and turn it into a valuable commodity. Without them, cocaine and marijuana would be like oranges, and instead of making billions smuggling it, I’d be making pennies doing stoop labor in some California field, picking it. Don Winslow
I start work at 5 in the morning and I have a wicked insomnia problem. Don Winslow
Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart. Never. Ever. ‘You can come down the evolutionary ladder,’ Chon has observed to Ben and O; ‘you can’t climb up. Don Winslow
I have sat with the mothers who have lost addicted sons. I have sat with families of kids who have been killed in drug-related gang violence. I have been to the prisons. I have seen the effects. At some point in time, I felt I had to do something other than write a novel about … Read more
I have to remind the people who put down East Coast surfing that Kelly Slater is from Florida. Don Winslow
I’m a jazz guy and a Bruce Springsteen guy. So I wanted something more current, and edgier, and angrier. So I asked my kid to educate me about hip hop; he has an encyclopedic knowledge of it. And he did so. I found it to be much richer than I would’ve thought. I think some … Read more
We need to do something about gun violence in America. But every time one of these things happen, we say the same thing, and then we don’t seem to be able to do anything. And that needs to change. Don Winslow
American cops didn’t create that atmosphere, they’re the ones though who have to live with it on a daily basis. These are generalisations; you can’t make generalisations about hundreds of thousands of people. The New York Police Department, for instance, has 38,000 police officers in it. But most cops, when I talk to them, desperately … Read more