Quote

I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.

James Salter

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Salter
Aircraft Pilot
Film Director
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Successful
Men
Love
Afraid

More quotes by James Salter

Image
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
Image
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
Image
You are perfectly entitled to invent your life and to claim that it's true.
James Salter
Image
Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.
James Salter
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
James Salter
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.
James Salter
Image
The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design.
James Salter
Image
But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.
James Salter
Image
Events need their invitation, dissolutions their start.
James Salter
Image
I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.
James Salter
Image
They lay silently. She was staring at something across the room. She was making him feel uncomfortable. 'It wouldn't work. It's the attraction of opposites,' he said. We're not opposites.' I don't mean just you and me. 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.
James Salter
Image
You’re so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.
James Salter
Image
Lots of scripts are written and not made, even scripts that people want to make.
James Salter
Image
Dresscodes are for styleless people.
James Salter
Image
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