Robert B. Parker Quotes

• They give me the money, I give them the book. Having input into the adaptation would be kind of like selling a house and coming back three years later and saying, ‘Paint it this color!’

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Money, Uncategorized

  Tags in Back, Saying

• 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.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in College

  Tags in Little, Same

• I had achieved the most important things in my life when I married Joan and had the sons. Given the choice between Joan and the boys, and being a writer, I world give up being a writer without a blink.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Important, Without, Give

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

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Father, Respect

  Tags in Admiration

• 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.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in School, Girls, Friends

• I didn’t have to say it. I just had to write it. It was painful enough.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Write, Cause, Painful

• I think finally good writing gets out there, and people like it, and bad writing doesn’t. Well, no. Bad writing does get out there ’cause some people like it.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Bad, Writing, Cause

• 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.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Come, Long, Down

• 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.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women, Hope, Men

• 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!

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Book, Writing, Start

• I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show once. It was a really slow news day for Oprah, and there were several of us on ’cause none of us was sufficiently interesting by his or herself.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Show, Once

• It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Live, Small

• 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.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Someone, Parents, Write

• 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.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Learning, Able

• I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we’d stay right even.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Write, Read

• My older son who is, I think, here tonight, is forty-one years old. Which is odd because so am I.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Old, Son

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

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Around, Social

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

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Advice

  Tags in Write

• Send it to someone who can publish it. And if they won’t publish it, send it to someone else who can publish it! And keep sending it! Of course, if no one will publish it, at that point you might want to think about doing something other than writing.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Someone, Writing

• She found me intolerable. But she got to know me, and I wore her down.

  Robert B. Parker

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Down

Robert B. Parker (27)

Birth:	17th September, 1932
Death:	18th January, 2010
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist

About

Robert Brown Parker was an American crime writer. His most famous works were the novels about the private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies based on the character were also produced.

Related Authors

• Paul Engle
• Phyllis Gotlieb
• Richard Adams
• Roma Tearne
• Nikolai Gogol
• James Welch
• Maurice Barres
• Basil King
• C. S. Lewis
• Philip Roth

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 18th February

Births

• 1933 - Yoko Ono
• 1975 - Sarah Brown
• 1963 - Rob Andrew
• 1909 - Wallace Stegner
• 1932 - Duane Michals

Deaths

• 1834 - William Wirt
• 2001 - Roger A. Caras
• 1295 - Kublai Khan
• 1546 - Martin Luther
• 2001 - Balthus