George Pelecanos Quotes

When he talked his eyes went away from mine and then he forced himself to look straight at me and he began to explain and I knew that he felt very strange with me and that he hated me, and it was funny sitting there and talking like that, knowing he hated me.

I do like to make people cringe. That discomfort, tension, embarrassment, pain - all of those things interest me, and not through some sort of masochistic or sadistic impulse. It illuminates what being a human being is. It taps into what it is to be human more incisively than stuff that's just very pedestrian.

How on earth could that be done? If you try to laugh and say 'No' at the same time, it sounds like neighing - yet people are perpetually doing it in novels. If they did it in real life they would be locked up.

What is it about silence that makes people uneasy?

When you go on vacation with people, you learn a lot about them.

You cannot write about what people are really like without making a political adjudication. All our ideas of what human nature consists of or how people really feel and experience life are, at their base, political ideas.

All the time, I'm watching relationships.

Interesting to me, at least, is that often you meet certain king of people and you feel, in their company, extremely warm and hopeful that they care about you, but you also think that they probably have 10 other people they put their attention to. You think, "Wow, this person is making me feel so special and like they really love me." But the savvy part of me thinks, "They probably do that to everybody."

That's how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other.

It's a common feeling for people to feel intermittent antipathy toward individuals they're familiar with.

My biggest pet peeve is when a girl says, "I'm not into drama." Why are you even mentioning it?! That's dramatic in itself!

People generally despise where they flatter, and cringe to those they would gladly overtop; so that truth and ceremony are two things.

People don't like silence, so they'll keep talking to fill the void.

Seemed to me important in writing about people to be able to describe the sexual transactions between them. It's - for many people it's the height of, what they see, of ecstasy and poetry is in their sexual encounters. And furthermore, personality - human personality does not end in the bedroom, but persists.

Ain't it funny what people say? Ain't it funny what people write?

Awkwardness is where tension is, and tension is where the story is. It's also where the comedy is, which I'm interested in; when it resolves it tends to resolve toward melancholy, a certain resignation, which I find interesting as well.

I find people confusing.

I am put on my best behavior, which means the same thing as the most uncomfortable behavior.

I find it very eerie when somebody is being really polite.

Friends make pretence of following to the grave but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand.

People [are] as much a source of entertainment as they [are] a source of irritation. it keep[s] things balanced.

The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]

People at a point of conflict are always the most interesting stories to tell.

When it comes to people -- don't write about who you know; but what you know of human nature.

Much awkwardness ensued.