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
philosophy real philosophical
I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be. It's wrong to say "everybody," but in literature I see it all the time - preoccupation with it, philosophical preoccupation, in fact. That's a principle element of literature and philosophy, often cited as the main element, the only real element. I say give it up.
writing certain ifs
I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist.
light snow cold
A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold.
intense inequality
Happiness is often at its most intense when it is based on inequality.
book ideas levels
Normally, what you’re envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels … almost nonexistent things.
weather meals life-is
Life is weather. Life is meals,
girl party long
A film writer is very much like a party girl. While you're good-looking and still unlined, the possibilities seem endless. But your appeal doesn't last long and you're quickly discarded.
solitude benefits difficult
Solitude. One knows instinctively it has benefits that must be more deeply satisfying than those of other conditions, but still it is difficult.
past design sifting
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.
dream reality skeletons
The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.
believe should
One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.
summer morning garden
The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four -the years turn dry as leaves.
pages ifs
Life passes into pages if it passes into anything,
writing novel great-things
I always knew writing a novel was a great thing.