Marcel Duhamel, editor of Gallimard's famous La Serie Noire, to novelist Chester Himes:"Get an idea. Start with action, somebody does something--a man reaches out a hand and opens a door, light shines in his eyes, a body lies on the floor, he turns, looks up and down the hall... Always action in detail. Make pictures. Like motion pictures. Always the scenes are visible. No stream of consciousness at all. We don't give a damn who's thinking what--only what they're doing. Always doing something. From one scene to another. Don't worry about it making sense. That's for the end. Give me 220 typed pages."
From James Sallis' Chester Himes: A Life (Walker & Company, 2001).
