American - Novelist | June 10, 1925 - June 19, 2015
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
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I have said many times I don't want to be considered one who once flew fighters. That's not who I am. I devoted the subsequent 50 years - more - to writing.
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I don't hold myself dictated to by what everyone is saying, by the tabloids or popular opinion. I don't like bourgeois values. I say you find your own way to live.
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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.
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You can't be admitted to the ranks of writers of importance unless you have sales.
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The death of kings can be recited, but not of one's child.
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I would say that I am a jaded man beyond most expectations, but, like everyone else, I still have hope.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The writers of books are companions in one's life and, as such, are often more interesting than other companions.
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