Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Salter
Aircraft Pilot
Film Director
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Still
Lucky
Book
Writer
Enough
Quite
Long
Books
Would
Gone
Optimistic
Think
Read
Accomplished
Thinking
Running
Survive
Around
Among

More quotes by James Salter

Image
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
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
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
Image
Dresscodes are for styleless people.
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
Dialogue's a method of revelation, of course. A few words of dialogue can reveal worlds about a character.
James Salter
Image
Events need their invitation, dissolutions their start.
James Salter
Image
You are perfectly entitled to invent your life and to claim that it's true.
James Salter
Image
I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.
James Salter
Image
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
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
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
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
ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.
James Salter
Image
You’re so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.
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
The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.
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
Normally, what you’re envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels … almost nonexistent things.
James Salter
Image
If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.
James Salter