Author

I would say that I am a jaded man beyond most expectations, but, like everyone else, I still have hope.

Certain people can keep a word tune, so to speak, and certain people cannot. And, above all, certain people can tell a story, and other people can't. They don't hear that point where something else has to come.

From James Salter

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. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader's hair frizzy. There's a question of pacing.

From James Salter

The notion that anything can be invented wholly and that these invented things are classified as 'fiction' and that other writing, presumably not made up, is called 'nonfiction' strikes me as a very arbitrary separation of things.

From James Salter

The writers of books are companions in one's life and, as such, are often more interesting than other companions.

From James Salter

I've known the anxiety of being completely lost, flying at night. It can be extreme. You're travelling at close to five hundred miles an hour, and every minute that goes by takes you further into being lost unless you get help from ground radar somewhere or somehow figure out the error.

From James Salter

As a writer, you aren't anybody until you become somebody.

From James Salter

I knew what my father, more than anything else, wanted me to do. Seventeen, vain, and spoiled by poems, I prepared to enter a remote West Point. I would succeed there, it was hoped, as he had.

From James Salter

Most writers can write three times as many books as I have and still live a life.

From James Salter

You have your brains, but it's energy and desire that make you write a book.

From James Salter

James Salter

Notable Quotes

Authors with Similar Views

E. L. Doctorow

Francis Bacon

Jean M. Auel

Anita Brookner

Anita Diament

Authors with Opposing Views

John le Carre

Alice Oswald

Alyssa Milano

Amy Bloom

Ashwin Sanghi