Top 80 Elmore Leonard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.”

— Elmore Leonard

2. “Skip the boring parts.”

— Elmore Leonard

3. “Not dreams but night changes, not destiny but path changes, always keep your hopes alive, luck may or may not change, but time definitely chages.”

— Elmore Leonard

4. “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

— Elmore Leonard

5. “What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he’s already been told twice.”

— Elmore Leonard

6. “It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to sound like it does.”

— Elmore Leonard

7. “There’s nothing like work to take your mind off your worries.”

— Elmore Leonard

8. “I try to leave out the parts readers skip.”

— Elmore Leonard

9. “My purpose is to entertain and please myself. I feel that if I am entertained, then there will be enough other readers who will be entertained, too.”

— Elmore Leonard

10. “There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees. And there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living.”

— Elmore Leonard

11. “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”

— Elmore Leonard

12. “I got halfway through ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.’ I don’t get it at all. What’s the big thrill? It’s boring.”

— Elmore Leonard

13. “A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now.”

— Elmore Leonard

14. “If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.”

— Elmore Leonard

15. “The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.”

— Elmore Leonard

16. “If you take a few days to write an outline, you’re just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur – better ideas that have to do with what you’re writing.”

— Elmore Leonard

17. “I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.”

— Elmore Leonard

18. “I have fun writing. I don’t make it a chore. I don’t have to struggle with it.”

— Elmore Leonard

19. “A pen connects you to the paper. It definitely matters.”

— Elmore Leonard

20. “There are 500 million people on Facebook, but what are they saying to each other? Not much.”

— Elmore Leonard

21. “Raylan got ready.”

— Elmore Leonard

22. “Don’t worry about what your mother thinks of your language.”

— Elmore Leonard

23. “It’s like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there’s this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person’s gone, and it’s too late to do anything about it.”

— Elmore Leonard

24. “The Sierra Madre was like the sea, he thought. Both of them deathless, monotonously eternal, and so indifferent in their magnitude that either could accept the dust of all the world’s dead and not have the decency to show it in posture.”

— Elmore Leonard

25. “There’s something happening here, I know it. It’s right in front of my face, but I just can’t see it.”

— Elmore Leonard

26. “Never use the words ‘suddenly’ or ‘all hell broke loose.’”

— Elmore Leonard

27. “He called out to no one in particular, “Fire in the Hole!”

— Elmore Leonard

28. “Using adverbs is a mortal sin.”

— Elmore Leonard

29. “I won’t read a book that starts with a description of the weather. I don’t read books over 300 pages, though I’ll make an exception for Don Delillo.”

— Elmore Leonard

30. “I don’t believe in writer’s block or waiting for inspiration. If you’re a writer, you sit down and write.”

— Elmore Leonard

31. “Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.”

— Elmore Leonard

32. “Quiet and calculating. He hasn’t changed that much since. Always mild-mannered, the nice guy – until someone steps over the line and challenges him.”

— Elmore Leonard

33. “Never open a book with weather. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.”

— Elmore Leonard

34. “I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn’t have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.”

— Elmore Leonard

35. “I’m not going to write for posterity. I’m going to write to make a buck.”

— Elmore Leonard

36. “In the light of eternity, is it better to sell out and ride or stand up and walk?”

— Elmore Leonard

37. “Bad guys are not bad guys twenty-four hours a day.”

— Elmore Leonard

38. “That’s right, you got a divorce. You remarried – what about your present husband?” “He died last year.” “You go through ’em,” Nicolet said. “What kind of work did he do?” “He drank,” Jackie said.”

— Elmore Leonard

39. “I’ve learned if you’re ever angry enough to hit somebody, don’t do it. Cool down and get yourself a pistol.”

— Elmore Leonard

40. “I don’t judge in my books. I don’t have to have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It’s just how it comes out. I’m just telling a story.”

— Elmore Leonard

41. “I don’t want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.”

— Elmore Leonard

42. “I don’t believe in writer’s block. I don’t know what that is. There are just certain little areas that I know I’m going to get through. It’s just a matter of finding a way.”

— Elmore Leonard

43. “I never see my bad guys as simply bad. They want pretty much the same thing that you and I want: they want to be happy.”

— Elmore Leonard

44. “I don’t get in a position to be frightened. I don’t do anything dangerous, and I always pay my bills.”

— Elmore Leonard

45. “At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. To know too much at the start takes the pleasure out of discovering what the book is about.”

— Elmore Leonard

46. “All the information you need can be given in dialogue.”

— Elmore Leonard

47. “I get letters. I get several a week, I think. A lot of people want a picture, a lot of people just want an autograph.”

— Elmore Leonard

48. “My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.”

— Elmore Leonard

49. “Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue.”

— Elmore Leonard

50. “I always felt, you don’t have a good time doin crime, you may as well find a job.”

— Elmore Leonard