Epigrams

Some of Walter’s wise and witty bon mots

-I like mysteries because writing them gives me—theoretically, at least—an opportunity to demonstrate how clever I am. 

 -I needed to understand [my characters] first as people: to recognize the complicated—sometimes sloppy—uniqueness of their individual lives. And I think that doing this, in the act of fiction or the act of living, is kind of a nifty thing, and may even be important.

-The problem with theater is there aren’t enough close-ups.

-I hate email because I can never be as charming or witty as I can on the phone…

On being chastised for walking naked in front of a large window: -Well, if they haven’t seen one before, they won’t know what it is.

Other answers to Ernie Bulow’s question about what he wanted written on his gravestone: –Somebody else’s name…or maybe ‘He paid his bar tab.’

Q from a Goodreads fan: What’s the best thing about being a writer? – A: Fast cars and fast women.

From Wall of Glass: -In any other American city this size, the road would have been paved. But in Santa Fe, raw earth is as chic as raw fish.

From Accustomed to the Dark: – I passed a large painted mural that displayed the huge faces of women peering out from beyond banana fronds. The faces were stylized and impossibly beautiful, the faces of what a friend once called `feral women’ — abandoned at birth and raised by fashion photographers.

From New York Nocturne: -‘Brave?’ Mrs. [Dorothy] Parker laughed, sounding somewhat frayed. ‘My sphincter was plucking buttons off the car seat.”

-Consciousness is what the universe uses to find out how things are going. 

When he knew he was dying: -We were going down a small hill and I could see, at the bottom, two directional arrows painted on the asphalt…One arrow pointed straight ahead, the other pointed to the right…

The thought suddenly came to me: ‘We all follow arrows.’

And abruptly the stuff that had been weighing me down just disappeared.
And I smiled. I’ve been smiling off and on, every day since.