Jesse Kellerman

“We crime novelists have a great pulpit. We write about justice and about correcting injustice.”

“Being a member of the Nintendo generation, I've got a really short attention span.”

“I used to live in New York, and I know a number of people who have friends who work at galleries. I spent time hanging out with them, going to openings. It was a good way to do research, to hang out and to look at the art that was present.”

“It's always been a struggle to differentiate myself, but I like my parents. I enjoy doing events with them, and I don't feel I should purposely avoid something just for the sake of being different.”

“Aside from a brief stint as a writing tutor during graduate school, I have managed to avoid respectable employment all my adult life.”

“Crime novels have a clear beginning, middle, and end: a mystery, its investigation, and its resolution. The reader expects events to play out logically and efficiently, and these expectations force the writer to spend a good deal of time working on macrostructure rather than prettifying individual sentences.”

“Trying to catch hold of yourself is a fool's errand. There is no you, only a series of former yous, created in one instant, deleted in the next.”

“I think everyone assumes that I talk to my parents a lot about writing, but I didn't - they're my parents. We didn't have constant workshops running in my household.”

“I don't intend to write the same kind of book for the rest of my life because I feel I would not be satisfied only writing in one mode.”

“I had some trepidation about working with someone else, especially a family member. You don't want work to affect your personal relationship.”

“I ought to be more hardboiled; I'd like to be. I don't think I have it in me. To write in clipped sentences. To employ gritty metaphor in the introduction of sultry blondes... I can't do it, so why bother trying?”

“Art requires choices, the more specific, the better.”

“It's impossible for me to disentangle how much of my storytelling urge is the product of growing up with novelist parents and how much is a genetic legacy from those same parents.”

“The final product in a play is not just the written word. It's the production, the performance. The script is, of course, a very important piece; but it's only one element. Ultimately, yours is one of several voices. People can change your work in a play for better or worse.”

“All my books deal with the effect of intent upon action, how our understanding of good and evil depends heavily on context.”

“Tragedy without comedy is melodrama, and comedy without a higher purpose is vacant.”

“Naturally, it was easier for me to envision becoming a novelist than it is for most people. I had two great in-house teachers; I had parents who considered a career in the arts a real possibility rather than a dreamy arrow shot into the sky.”

“Science, literature, and common sense tell us that the self is a fickle thing, subject to revision in real time, and that the chasm that exists between any two people exists inside each and every one of us.”

“Five people read my work before its ready for publication, and I solicit opinions from all of them: my wife, my agent, my editor, and my parents.”

“People are both more willing and less willing to talk to you when you're a writer.”