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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.

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
Time
Living
Avoid
Like
Write
Fortune
House
Style
Take
Wife
Must
Literature
Hostages
Giving
Getting
Hostage
Writing
Chance
Lets
Never
Wish
Expensive

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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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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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Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.
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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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My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have
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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.
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Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form
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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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I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal
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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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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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In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life
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Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
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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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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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All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.
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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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