Tony Hillerman Quotes
The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.
An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.
From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.
The first Chapter Law is, "Don't spend much time on it. You're going to have to rewrite it."
Having grown up in Oklahoma when it was one of the last states which prohibited liquor, I grew up with War On Drugs, where every teenager knew who the bootleggers were
A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.
I know what I write about seems exotic to a lot of people, but not for me. I pulled up to an old trading post and saw a few elderly Navajos sitting on a bench. I felt right at home.
IF you are not for yourself, who will be for you? If you are only for yourself, what are you? If not now, when?
Thoughts, and words that spring from them, bend the individual's reality. To speak of death is to invite it. To think of sorrow is to produce it.
You write for two people, yourself and your audience, who are usually better educated and at least as smart.
I am 82 years old. I imagine that I will keep on writing as long as anyone wants to keep reading.
