Walter Mosley

Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12 1952) is a prominent American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction.

If I only wrote Easy Rawlins, I might be a lot more successful, money-wise and stuff, but the work would be dead.

Quotes

Walking the Line (2005)

• Lawyer even sounds like liar.

• The police and I have a deal. I don't talk to them and they don't listen to me.

"Walter Mosley’s favorites? That’s easy." (2025)

"Walter Mosley’s favorites? That’s easy." The Washington Post (March 15, 2025)

• "There was a period of time where all the books in the world could fit on this shelf,' Walter Mosley said. He was pointing at one modest-size row of books in his Brooklyn home ..."And what people did is they read them over and over again, and they knew them so well, and they learned so much, and it changed them. Now, this shelf represents one second of publishing."

• The DC world was: There’s good and bad, and it’s an absolute thing. But Marvel had characters like the Sub-Mariner, who was a hero to his people and a villain to the surface world. I can have good and bad thoughts, basically. And I loved it. I’ve always loved it.

• When you run into Hammett and his political history, you see that he’s explaining what’s wrong with society, the crime of society itself. And how can you be a hero inside that?

• There was a desire — it wasn’t a marketing desire, it was ‘I want everybody to read this and to understand it no matter what level they’re at in their own education.’ Robert E. Howard was very well educated, knew a lot of stuff, but you didn’t have to know that to read Conan.

• If I only wrote Easy Rawlins, I might be a lot more successful, money-wise and stuff, but the work would be dead.

Quotes about Walter Mosley

• What still needs to be accomplished can be summed up by the lovely album released on my birthday last year by Solange—A Seat at the Table. How much significant, systemic progress and change can be made if you still don’t have a seat at the table? Walter Mosley was organizing around this question in the early 90s via PEN’s Open Book Committee, which I believe he founded, to help bring more people of color into the publishing industry. Why is that vital? Because different people at the table ask different questions, seek different voices, and have a different relationship to all the things we are told are “universal.” Intersectionality matters. Consider what work we wouldn’t get to read if other talented people didn’t get a seat at the table, a chance to guest edit, an opportunity to curate, to be a juror, to host, promote, celebrate, read and review, be reviewed, speak …
  • Sheree Thomas Interview with Apex Magazine (2017)