American - Novelist | June 10, 1925 - June 19, 2015
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.
James Salter
NightFlyingAnxietyHelpYouLost
As a writer, you aren't anybody until you become somebody.
YouBecomeSomebodyWriterAnybody
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.
FatherMeSucceedMoreAnything
Most writers can write three times as many books as I have and still live a life.
LifeLiveThreeWriteBooksStill
You have your brains, but it's energy and desire that make you write a book.
BookEnergyYouDesireWriteBrains
I've made an effort to nurture the feminine in myself. I don't mean overtly, but in terms of response to things.
MyselfEffortMeanThingsNurture
I love to write about Nabokov and also to think about him. I love his attitude that he is incomparable, his lofty judgments and general scorn of other writers - not all of them, of course.
LoveAttitudeThinkWriteHimHe
Written pages are something that can be returned to, reclaimed, and when they are marvelous, never lose their power.
PowerLoseNeverSomethingMarvelous
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.
SchoolWritingBookSomeoneYou
There are writers for whom names mean nothing; everybody could be called John and Elizabeth, and the writing would be just as good. A name, of course, is like a piece of clothing, isn't it? It gives you an impression right away.
GoodWritingNameYouNothingMean
It's possible of course, especially when you're young, to read a book and take it to your heart. And you don't need to speak to anybody about it - it's so important to you: You have found it.
HeartBookSpeakYouYoungPossible
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.
GoodYourselfThinkYouWriteBring
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict James Salter quotes