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I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

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
Drink
Dead
Working
Ideas
Writing
Eyeglasses
Never
Occurred
Would
Sober
Glasses

More quotes by Irwin Shaw

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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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My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me
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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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Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life
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I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young
Irwin Shaw
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Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure obviously, he was no sissy.
Irwin Shaw
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Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.
Irwin Shaw
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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.
Irwin Shaw
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Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form
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All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.
Irwin Shaw
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No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.
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The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.
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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. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
Irwin Shaw
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Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House
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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.
Irwin Shaw
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The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.
Irwin Shaw
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I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal
Irwin Shaw
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My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have
Irwin Shaw