Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shawwas a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: The Young Lions, about the fate of three soldiers during World War II, made into a film of the same name starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Rich Man, Poor Man, about the fate of three siblings after World War II, that was made into a popular miniseries starring...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth27 February 1913
CityBronx, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life
Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form
My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever
I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe.
Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.
Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.
Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.
No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.
Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
The writer works in a lonely way.
A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.
Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.
All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.
There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.