Said in Seattle

Two weeks ago I reported on How I Spent My Mystery Writer Vacation at Left Coast Crime in Seattle.  Below you will find some of the words of wisdom I picked up there.  Unfortunately all the context fell off the Space Needle, so you're on your own in that regard.

"I want to welcome everyone to the beautiful Northwest and what is also known as the serial killer capital of the world." - Jamie Lee Sogn

 "Just for fun, let's actually address the topic of the panel." - Meredith Taylor

 "A man wakes up in the afterlife.  It's a Jewish afterlife.  There's nothing there." - Jo Perry

"She has a personality chart that's based on dim sum." - Jennifer J. Chow

"The finacular railway is the slowest chase in the world." - Wendall Thomas

"Edgar Allan Poe was a great theorist but if you actually apply it to his writings he's about a C student." - Stephen D. Rogers 

"Whenever I see something in media or social media that makes me afraid I ask: who's making money off this?" - John Copenhaver

"I don't have a brother and I never wanted to murder him." - Peter Malone Elliott

"Soap operas are kind of the porn of the industry." - Jon Lindstrom

"Any of my villains who bought it in the end were on that train from the beginning." - SJ Rozan

"I once got a review and it was just the word CRAP with one hundred exclamation points.  It's my favorite review." - Lee Matthew Goldberg 

"There is more than one way to write a story, but not for me." - Michael Allan Mallory

"A movie set is like a small town." - Marjorie McCown

"Felons are easy victims because no one believes them when somebody targets them." - Pamela Benson

"What's political about Texas?" - David Corbett

"I always think of writing as being a con artist." - Stephen D. Rogers 

"The thing about procrastination is it pays off right now." - Bobby Mathews 

"It's good to see so many faces of people who aren't mad at me." - Brian Thornton

"This is just what I wanted to write about, just sweetness and light, and a little bit of murder." - G.P. Gottlieb

"Wars are great initiators of new slang." - Jeanne Matthews 

"The villain is the personification of what gets in the way." - SJ Rozan

"I've been a parole officer for 112 years." - Cindy Goyette

"He is equally comfortable taking romantic walks on the beach, or dumping the body elsewhere." - Brian Thornton

"That book was criticized for letting the social issues distract from the story but I thought the social issue was the story." - Priscilla Paton

"When I'm writing a book I turn into a Roomba." - Karen Odden

"People who aren't awful bore the hell out of me." - Rob Pierce

"I don't want any pretty murders." - Thomas Perry

"Spy stuff is intentionally murky so I never know if I'm supposed to be lost here." - David Downing

"One of the unknown secrets about ghostwriters is that many of us are the children of addicts and narcissists." - Sarah Tomlinson

"The editor is there to make your art into a commercial product." - Juliet Grames

"The movies Silver Streak and Julia have train scenes that are almost the same but one is terrifying and one is hilarious."  - Wendall Thomas

"I'm getting my law degree from Twitter." - David Corbett 

"When I was writing about the sixteenth century the phone rang and I said 'What the hell is this thing?'" - Kenneth Wishnia

"That's our job. We make things up." - Meredith Taylor