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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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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
Become
Character
Firsts
Began
First
Complicated
Much
Characters
Would
Normal
Imagine
Literature

More quotes by 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.
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In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75
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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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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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I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.
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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
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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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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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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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A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.
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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. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
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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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Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
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I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans
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You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.
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Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form
Irwin Shaw
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I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young
Irwin Shaw
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life
Irwin Shaw