Don’t copy another writer’s style, because that is not authentic, and that’s how it will sound. You develop your style over your whole life and through countless influences. Don’t impose something artificial. – Douglas Brunt
New York can get on top of you if you don’t have much money, but if you have money, it’s kind of a playground. – Douglas Brunt
Adverbs lead to overwriting. Try taking them out and reading your prose again to see how it sounds. Simple and less words are more powerful. – Douglas Brunt
‘The Means’ is about power. I have access to political insiders who helped me write a portrait of the real day-to-day in politics, which turned out to be crazier than Wall Street. – Douglas Brunt
If there is going to be any meaningful sales, it’s going to be through word of mouth and people recommending it to their book club and then a thousand more book clubs do it, and then you get into real sales numbers. – Douglas Brunt
In my first book, ‘Ghosts Of Manhattan,’ the setting was Wall Street, and I explored the predictable nature of a bond trader inside the compensation scheme at Bear Stearns and the government regulations of Wall Street. That was about money. – Douglas Brunt
Don’t write more than 3 hours at a time. I write three hours in the morning, 9 A.M. – 12 P.M. Other people are best late at night. – Douglas Brunt
On Wall Street, every story becomes known so quickly. They are all so connected that everything disseminates there faster than anywhere. – Douglas Brunt
Spend more time working before you write page one. Then, the story – at least parts of it – will feel as though it is writing itself. – Douglas Brunt
Wall Street has played a role in everyone’s life, and it has been vilified by everyone, but I think that the average trader didn’t have a sense of what was coming. The culture is so vacuous, it’s possible to come to it straight out of college and never have a real adult life, even if you have the wife and kids. – Douglas Brunt
From a distance, the American political system is a remarkable success. We have accomplished the peaceful transfer of power for more than two hundred years, and that’s unmatched by any civilization in human history. Up close, our political system still has all the ugliness and bad actors that you might suspect. – Douglas Brunt
A theme I’m obsessed with is the tension between human nature and the frameworks designed to curb the worst and promote the best of it. – Douglas Brunt
