James Salter Quotes

Quotes about:

• To write? Because all this is going to vanish. The only thing left will be the prose and poems, the books, what is written down. Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with nothing, we would be naked on earth.

  James Salter

  Book, Writing, Past

  58 Copy quote

• There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

  James Salter

  Dream, Real, Writing

  James Salter (2016). “The Art of Fiction”, p.64, University of Virginia Press

  42 Copy quote

• Love must wait; it must break one’s bones.

  James Salter

  Waiting, Bones, Break

  37 Copy quote

• Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit. Most of the details, though, have long since been transformed or rearranged to bring others of them forward. Some, in fact, are obviously counterfeit; they are no less important. One alters the past to form the future.

  James Salter

  Past, Long, Important

  James Salter (1995). “A Sport and a Pastime”

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Storm, Months

  "Ali? Laver? Best? No, the Williams sisters" by Will Buckley, www.theguardian.com. September 15, 2007.

  5 Copy quote

• It's tremendous: this world, this life. Take it while you have it.

  James Salter

  World, This World, This Life

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I'm hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling—it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don't want to have the same vocabulary I've always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful.

  James Salter

  Powerful, Tired, Ice

  James Salter, Robert Phelps (2010). “Memorable Days: The Selected Letters of James Salter and Robert Phelps”, p.25, Counterpoint Press

  20 Copy quote

• What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.

  James Salter

  Writing, Impulse, Ultimate

  9 Copy quote

• There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands. And yet, this pouring, this flood of encounters, struggles, dreams...

  James Salter

  Dream, Struggle, Hands

  James Salter (2011). “Light Years”, p.35, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• Dialogue's a method of revelation, of course. A few words of dialogue can reveal worlds about a character.

  James Salter

  Character, World, Revelations

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, People, Sometimes

  FaceBook post by James Salter from Mar 05, 2017

  18 Copy quote

• 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

  Falling In Love, Men, Opposites

  FaceBook post by James Salter from Feb 24, 2013

  19 Copy quote

• I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible.

  James Salter

  Hands, Likes, Wonder

  "James Salter, The Art of Fiction No. 133". Interview with Edward Hirsch, www.theparisreview.org. 1993.

  12 Copy quote

• I deem as heroic those who have the harder task, face it unflinchingly and live. In this world women do that.

  James Salter

  Tasks, World, Faces

  13 Copy quote

• Age doesn't arrive slowly, it comes in a rush. One day nothing has changed, a week later, everything has. A week may be too long a time, it can happen overnight. You are the same and still the same and suddenly one morning two distinct lines, ineradicable, have appeared at the corners of your mouth.

  James Salter

  Morning, Two, Long

  James Salter (2013). “All That Is”, p.160, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Reading, Color, People

  FaceBook post by James Salter from Mar 18, 2017

  15 Copy quote

• Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are the only source from which may be drawn a life more successful, more knowing than our own. Somehow they will do one thing, take one step further, they will see the summit. We believe in it, the radiance that streams from the future, from days we will not see. Children must live, must triumph. Children must die; that is an idea we cannot accept.

  James Salter

  Children, Believe, Successful

  James Salter (2011). “Light Years”, p.69, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others?

  James Salter

  Book, Rivers, Illumination

  "Light Years". Book by James Salter, 2011.

  20 Copy quote

• A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold.

  James Salter

  Light, Snow, Cold

  James Salter (1995). “A Sport and a Pastime”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Falling In Love, Mean, Men

  17 Copy quote

• Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one longed for, envied, believed in, that was not life. It was what life was seeking; it was a suspension of life. But to be close to a child, for whom one spent everything, whose life was protected and nourished by one's own, to have that child beside one, at peace, was the real, the deepest, the only joy.

  James Salter

  Children, Real, Drunk

  James Salter (2011). “Light Years”, p.300, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• Dresscodes are for styleless people.

  James Salter

  People

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Ideas, Effort

  "James Salter: The Greatest Writer You've Never Read" by Alex Bilmes, www.esquire.com. June 21, 2015.

  13 Copy quote

• You are perfectly entitled to invent your life and to claim that it's true.

  James Salter

  Claims, Entitled

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Real, Luxury, Teeth

  James Salter (1995). “A Sport and a Pastime”

  10 Copy quote

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