James Salter
James Salter
James Arnold Horowitz, better known as James Salter, his pen name and later-adopted legal name, was an American novelist and short-story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he resigned from the military in 1957 following the successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 June 1925
CountryUnited States of America
absolute although complete empty notes park trains written
Although I've made notes for things and even written synopses sitting in trains or on park benches, for the complete composition of things I need absolute solitude, preferably an empty house.
life writers
The writers of books are companions in one's life and, as such, are often more interesting than other companions.
bewildered crowd describing large school translate university visualize
If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing.
given good taught
I think you can be taught to write. You can't be taught to be a good writer. For that, you have to bring something to it, yourself, something that can't be given to you.
began editing editor fox joe stepped until wound
It was not until I began to write a book called 'Light Years' that an editor really stepped in. The editor was Joe Fox at Random House, and he wound up editing a subsequent book.
george himself published thrilled
'The Paris Review' was always the pinnacle: it was the place to be published. You were thrilled if you were published in 'The Paris Review,' and George Plimpton himself was practically mythical. He was a legendary figure.
power returned written
Written pages are something that can be returned to, reclaimed, and when they are marvelous, never lose their power.
waiting bones break
Love must wait; it must break one’s bones.
dream real writing
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.
writing opportunity joy
The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another.
powerful tired ice
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.
writing impulse ultimate
What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.
children real drunk
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.
falling-in-love men opposites
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