Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Salter
Aircraft Pilot
Film Director
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Everything
Writing
Would
Writer
Happen
Write
Given
Didn

More quotes by James Salter

Image
The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.
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
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
Normally, what you’re envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels … almost nonexistent things.
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
Lots of scripts are written and not made, even scripts that people want to make.
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
Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.
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
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
One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.
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
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
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
He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.
James Salter
Image
I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.
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
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
I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.
James Salter