Quote

Then it was intoxicating. The smooth takeoff, and the free feeling of having the world drop away. Soon after leaving the ground, they were crossing patches of stratus that lay in the valleys as heavy and white as glaciers. North for the first time. It was still an adventure, as exciting as love, as frightening.

James Salter

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James Salter
Aircraft Pilot
Film Director
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Drop
Crossing
Firsts
Soon
Flight
Crossings
First
Feeling
Lays
Patches
Time
Free
Heavy
Valleys
Love
White
Leaving
Aviation
World
Feelings
Smooth
Takeoff
Away
Adventure
Frightening
Intoxicating
Stills
Ground
North
Glaciers
Still
Exciting

More quotes by James Salter

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I write down portions, maybe fragments, and perhaps an imperfect view of what Im hoping to write. Out of that, I keep trying to find exactly what I want.
James Salter
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You write for glory. You play for glory. There's an ambition to excel, isn't there, to be a star? To score more, to do more, even when it's a team sport. So I think striving for glory is a natural subject for a writer. Seeking fame.
James Salter
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The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.
James Salter
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My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don’t.
James Salter
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You lived and died alone, especially in fighters. Fighters. Somehow, despite everything, that word had not become sterile. You slipped into the hollow cockpit and strapped and plugged yourself into the machine. The canopy ground shut and sealed you off. Your oxygen, your very breath, you carried into the chilled vacuum, in a steel bottle.
James Salter
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You would have to be very optimistic to think that any of your books will be among the books that survive in the very long run. I think if a writer is lucky enough to still have a few books around after he's gone, a few that are still being read, then he's accomplished quite a lot.
James Salter
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I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.
James Salter
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You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you know and what you experience. And this is undeniable.
James Salter
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Life passes into pages if it passes into anything.
James Salter
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Your parents are the parents you know best. Your brother and sister, if you have them, are the brother and sister you know best. They may not be the ones you like the best. They may not be the most interesting, but they are the closest and probably the clearest to you.
James Salter
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Amplitude is a powerful quality in fiction. It results in involvement, in sympathy with the characters. After a while, a reader can't avoid being involved with a book, caring about it, even if it's not a particularly good book. You're in it, and you're committed to it.
James Salter
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I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.
James Salter
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Dialogue's a method of revelation, of course. A few words of dialogue can reveal worlds about a character.
James Salter
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I'd given up everything to be a writer, and if I didn't then go on to do that - to write - then I didn't know what would happen to me.
James Salter
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Normally, what you’re envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels … almost nonexistent things.
James Salter
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A film writer is very much like a party girl. While you're good-looking and still unlined, the possibilities seem endless. But your appeal doesn't last long and you're quickly discarded.
James Salter
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One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.
James Salter
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Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.
James Salter
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Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.
James Salter
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ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.
James Salter