Literary Birthday – 3 November – Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith was born 3 November 1942 and died 11 July 2025 .

Six Martin Cruz Smith Quotes On Writing

1. You have to be an outsider to write.
2. I can’t write if it bores me. Two things count: it has to be interesting and I have to care about the character.
3. As a novelist, I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money.
4. I don’t reread a book of mine after it’s been published. All I see is shortcomings and errors. The gap between what I intended to accomplish and what I settled for is a yawning abyss.
5. That’s one of the great things about what I do; I’m allowed to follow any trail.
6. The research is the most interesting part… That’s how I work. I go some place and I walk it and I talk to people until I find what I’ve come for. Or not. Fortunately, I tend to find what I’m after.

Martin Cruz Smith was an American suspense and mystery novelist. He worked as a journalist in the 1960s, and began writing fiction in the early 1970s. He was best known for his 11-book series featuring Arkady Renko. The series started with Gorky Park. His most recent Renko novels were Independence Square and Hotel Ukraine. Smith twice won the Dashiell Hammett Award from the North American Branch of the International Association of Crime Writers. Click here for a full list of his works.

Source for Image: Mark Coggins from San Francisco, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MartinCruzSmith.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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