Quote

ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.

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
Lasts
Last
Great
Life
Realizations
Dreamed
Realization

More quotes by James Salter

Image
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
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
In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.
James Salter
Image
They are travelling cheaply, with that touch of indolence and occasional luxury that comes only from having real resources. They live in Levis and sunlight. Sometimes they brush their teeth in streams.
James Salter
Image
I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.
James Salter
Image
I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.
James Salter
Image
Events need their invitation, dissolutions their start.
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
Normally, what you’re envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels … almost nonexistent things.
James Salter
Image
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
Image
Dresscodes are for styleless people.
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
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
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
Dialogue's a method of revelation, of course. A few words of dialogue can reveal worlds about a character.
James Salter
Image
You’re so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.
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
Image
Life passes into pages if it passes into anything.
James Salter
Image
I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.
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