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
Away
Adventure
Smooth
Takeoff
Stills
Ground
Frightening
Intoxicating
Still
Exciting
North
Glaciers
Firsts
Soon
Drop
Crossing
First
Feeling
Flight
Crossings
Time
Free
Lays
Patches
Love
White
Heavy
Valleys
World
Feelings
Leaving
Aviation

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.
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Dialogue's a method of revelation, of course. A few words of dialogue can reveal worlds about a character.
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Events need their invitation, dissolutions their start.
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ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.
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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.
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Dresscodes are for styleless people.
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I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.
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Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.
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Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave
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Lots of scripts are written and not made, even scripts that people want to make.
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I like men who have known the best and the worst, whose life has been anything but a smooth trip. Storms have battered them, they have lain, sometimes for months on end, becalmed. There is a residue even if they fail. It has not been all tinkling there have been grand chords.
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.
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Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits.
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.
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One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.
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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.
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I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.
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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