James Salter quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by James Salter

James Salter Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from James Salter on Wise Famous Quotes.

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.

I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be.

There comes a time in life, when you realize that everything is a dream; only those things which are written down have any possibility of being real.

We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.

Life passes into pages if it passes into anything.

You have your brains, but it's energy and desire that make you write a book.

ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.

West Pointers tend to be rigorously honest - more than necessary, in my view.

A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold.

As Rilke says, there are no classes for beginners in life, the most difficult thing is always asked of one right away.

I deem as heroic those who have the harder task, face it unflinchingly and live. In this world women do that.

There came a time when I felt I was not going to be satisfied with life unless I could write.

For those we are born to speak to we need prepare nothing, the lines are ready, everything is there.

Dresscodes are for styleless people.

I can't explain it. It's what turns you to powder, being ground between what you can't do and what you must do. You just turn to dust.

He knew all the constellations. He had seen them rise in darkness over heartbreaking coasts.

Love must wait; it must break one's bones.

Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

I wasted time writing films. I don't look back on those years as lost, but it wasn't what I should have been doing.

What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.

The normal economic system works itself.

Lots of scripts are written and not made, even scripts that people want to make.

Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer.

In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.

He unrolls names like a splendid carpet.

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.

Normally, what you're envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels ... almost nonexistent things.

The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another.

Every nation feels itself to be superior, but in America it's a jaunty feeling, and in some cases a rather ominous one among the super-patriots.

He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two.

If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.

Now they are lovers. The first, wild courses are ended. They have founded their domain. A satanic happiness follows.

There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection.

Life is weather. Life is meals,

You are perfectly entitled to invent your life and to claim that it's true.

I've always said that I felt women are more heroic.

The heart is in darkness, unknowing, like those animals in mines that have never seen the day. It has no loyalties, no hopes; it has its task.

Written pages are something that can be returned to, reclaimed, and when they are marvelous, never lose their power.

It was love, the furnace into which everything was dropped.

One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change.

One should not believe too easily in a life which can easily vanish.

She comes to life with a soft exhausted sound, like someone saved from drowning.

Suddenly I am crushed by the simplicity of it all: he is leaving.

The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not.

A name, of course is like a piece of clothing, isn't it? It gives you an impression right away.

The writers of books are companions in one's life and, as such, are often more interesting than other companions.

He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older.

You can't be admitted to the ranks of writers of importance unless you have sales.

It's just that it's hard to believe in greatness ...

One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.

Writers really don't retire, you know. They have to be taken out and shot.

Events need their invitation, dissolutions their start.

The death of kings can be recited, but not of one's child.

My ideal is a book that is perfect on every page, that gives you tremendous aesthetic joy on every page. I suppose I am trying to write such a book.

I would say that I am a jaded man beyond most expectations, but, like everyone else, I still have hope.

I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you must remember that

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

As I look back, I see that life is like a game of solitaire and every once in a while there is a move.

It is always an accident that saves us. It is someone we have never seen.

I write in longhand. I am accustomed to that proximity, that feel of writing. Then I sit down and type.

Solitude. One knows instinctively it has benefits that must be more deeply satisfying than those of other conditions, but still it is difficult.

On the Internet, everyone is writing. There is a great flowering of writing.

We were moderate, we will never know what it is to spill out our lives ...

In 1957, I decided: write or perish.

Most writers can write three times as many books as I have and still live a life.

I've made an effort to nurture the feminine in myself. I don't mean overtly, but in terms of response to things.

The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.

I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist.

He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons. Finally it will become single nights, each one perilous as a lunar journey. He

It's tremendous: this world, this life. Take it while you have it.

You're so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.

Incandescent afternoons in Spain, the shutters closed, a blade of sun burning into the darkness.

I'd say the biggest relationship is the repetition of certain themes. I don't want to say "topics," but certain points of interest.

Art, in a sense, is life brought to a standstill, rescued from time. The secret of making it is simple: discard everything that is good enough.

When she said goodbye it was like a play ending. It was like the theater and coming out again to the streets.

Happiness is often at its most intense when it is based on inequality.

As a writer, you aren't anybody until you become somebody.

I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.