William Landay famous quotes

03-28-2025

The interior of a teenagerâ€™s mind is an endless war between Stupid and Clever.
-- William Landay

#Clever #Teenager #Stupid
I am interested in computers and technology, and art, photography, and design.
-- William Landay

#Photography #Art #Technology
I can't say that I ever actually decided to become a writer. It kind of snuck up on me.
-- William Landay

#Kind
I don't ever write with a particular audience in mind. I just write books that please me.
-- William Landay

#Book #Writing #Mind
I love sports, as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies, as all writers seem to.
-- William Landay

#Sports #Book #Books And Movies
I'm a bit of a tech geek myself.
-- William Landay

#Geek
Well, I outline fanatically. I am a long thinker and a slow writer, though I am trying to get faster.
-- William Landay

#Long #Trying #Faster
You can write a great book and be ignored. Literary history is full of classics that were under-appreciated in their own time.
-- William Landay

#Book #Writing #Ignored
Genes are not simple triggers. No one is hardwired to commit murder or any other crime. Our actions are always the result of stupendously complex gene-environment interactions, and environment is likely to remain the more important influence by far.
-- William Landay

#Simple #Important #Our Actions
Probably careful plotting reflects my personality. I am meticulous by nature. I can't imagine speed-writing anything that happens to pop into my head.
-- William Landay

#Writing #Personality #Imagine
When I was 30 or so - by that time I had become an assistant D.A. - I decided I would try to write a novel. To be clear: I did not decide to become a novelist. Honestly, it never crossed my mind that I could actually earn a living as a professional novelist.
-- William Landay

#Writing #Mind #Trying
Good stories are driven by conflict, tension, and high stakes.
-- William Landay

#Stories #Conflict #Driven
Crime and legal stories, broadly speaking, are just where my interest happens to lie.
-- William Landay

#Lying #Stories #Crime
At some point as adults we cease to be our parents' children and we become our children's parents instead.
-- William Landay

#Children #Parent #Adults
But sometimes you can't figure everything out because you can't ever really understand other people. You can't understand why they do what they do. You just have to accept a little mystery, Ben. People are mysterious, the world is mysterious. You can't know everything. You're not supposed to. This isn't a history book. It's just the world. It's a messy place.
-- William Landay

#Book #People #World
no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed
-- William Landay

#Knowing
An emotion is a thought, yes, an idea, but it is also a sensation, an ache in your body. Desire, love, hate, fear, repulsion - you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind.
-- William Landay

#Hate #Ideas #Mind
Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds youâ€”and it will find you
-- William Landay

#Damage
the act does not create guilt unless the mind is also guilty.
-- William Landay

#Mind #Guilt #Doe
Predisposition is not predestination.
-- William Landay

#Predestination
We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.
-- William Landay

#Moving #Men #Rough Times
There is no absolute beginning to any story, after all. There is only the moment you begin watching.
-- William Landay

#Stories #Moments
The rest-the vast majority, tens of thousands of days-are unremarkable, repetitive, even monotonous. We glide through them then instantly forget them. We tend not to think about this arithmetic when we look back on our lives. We remember the handful of Big Days and throw away the rest. We organize our long, shapeless lives into tidy little stories...But our lives are mostly made up of junk, of ordinary, forgettable days, and 'The End' is never the end.
-- William Landay

#Thinking #Long #Ordinary
You know, being confident isn't the same as being right.
-- William Landay

#Be Confident

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