Best 38 quotes of Robert B. Parker on MyQuotes

Being a professor and working are not the same thing. The academic community is composed largely of nitwits. If I may generalize. People who don't know very much about what matters very much, who view life through literature rather than the other way around.

Both our opinions are rooted in our experience," I said. "Both of them are true, it's just that we've had different experiences.

Coincidence exists, but believing in it never did me any good.

College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner.

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them.

Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.

Has anyone ever told you," I said, "that you coalesce reality?" "No. They only say that I'm good in the sack." "They are accurate but limited," I said. "And if you give me their names I'll kill them.

If you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms, and somehow you need to live up to them.

If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it.

I got thrown out of school several weeks in my senior year being caught in the girls' dorm. This was 1954, friends. The girls' dorm was off limits. Even to girls, I think.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

I needed to find my way to write. I need about six hours of uninterrupted time in order to produce about two hours of writing, and when I accepted that and found the way to do it, then I was able to write.

I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!

I think at this stage in my life I have learned that there are any number of things that men will never know, and can never hope to know, about women.

It's tempting to say the Ph.D. didn't have an effect, but it's not so. I think whatever resonance I may be able to achieve is in part simply from the amount of reading and learning that I acquired along the way

Joan organizes our social life, and on weekends I follow her around.

Sure, I have advice for people starting to write. Don't. I don't need the competition.

Teaching is too strong a word for whatever it was I did at Northeastern University

The key to growing up well, is being tough enough.

There can never be any substitute for your own palate nor any better education than tasting the wine yourself.

There's something about being able to literally consume a work of art - then to divide all that pleasure of it - because it's a memory. A great wine for me is a memory, it's an extraordinary experience.

This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.

This was 1954, friends. The girls' dorm was off limits. Even to girls, I think.

Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon

Well, you give me too much credit for foresight and planning. I haven't got a clue what the hell I'm doing.

We split a bottle of Norman cider. Not everybody sells Norman cider by the bottle.

Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.

Yeah. Floyd is his batman." His what?" Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant." You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don't make you money than anybody I know.

Yeah. Floyd is his batman.

After a while I got hungry and went to the kitchen. There was nothing to eat. I drank another beer and looked again, and found half a loaf of whole wheat bread behind the beer in the back of the refrigerator...

Freedom of the press is a flaming sword. Use it wisely, hold it high, guard it well.

It’s like I need to love you to come back whole from where I sometimes go.

Pearl was hurring around my apartment, sniffing everything, including Rich Beaumont and Patty Giacomin, which neither of them like much. "Can you get Pearl to settle down?" Paul asked. "I could speak to her, but she'd continue to do what she wants, and I'd look ineffectual. My approach is to endorse everything she does." Susan said, "Come here, Pearl." And Pearl went over to her, and Susan gave her a kiss on the mouth, and Pearl wagged her tail; and lapped Susan's face, and turned and went back and sniffed at Patty.

Rachel drank some more bourbon. “What I am trying to do,” she said, “is to thank you. And to say it as genuinely as I can. I do thank you. I will remember as long as I live when you came into the room and got me, and I will always remember when you killed them, and I was glad, and you came and we put our arms around each other. And I will always remember that you cried.

See, being a person is kind of random and arbitrary business. You may have noticed that. And you need to believe in something to keep it from being too random and arbitrary to handle. Some people take religion, or success, or patriotism, or family, but for a lot of guys those things don't work. A guy like me. I don't have religion or family that sort of thing. So you accept some system of order, and you stick to it.

Thank you sir," she said. "I hope that your friend feels better soon." I shrugged. "The ways of the Lord" I said, "are often dark, but never pleasant.

The thing I like about Irish whiskey is that the more you drink the smoother it goes down. Of course that's probably true of antifreeze as well, but illusion is nearly all we have.

...You have any suggestions, make them. I'm in charge but humble. No need to salute when you see me." Fraser said, "Mind if we snicker every once in a while behind your back?" "Hell, no," I said. "Everyone else does.