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No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

Irwin Shaw

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Irwin Shaw
Age: 71 †
Born: 1913
Born: February 27
Died: 1984
Died: May 16
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff
Doesn
Enjoys
Need
Writes
Feel
Sorry
Feels
Paid
Needs
Writer
Writing
Literature
Even
Enjoy
Feelings
Comeback

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My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have
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When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.
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I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?
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All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.
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An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.
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Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
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Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure obviously, he was no sissy.
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Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
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If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.
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Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life
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Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.
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Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.
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In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75
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A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.
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I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans
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Writing is like a contact sport, like football. Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can't they? Yet they can't wait until Saturday comes around so they can play on the high school team, or the college team, and get smashed around. Writing is like that. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it!
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The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.
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My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me
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Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own
Irwin Shaw