Top James Salter Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

James Salter Biography

James Arnold Horowitz (June 10, 1925 – June 19, 2015), 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.

Read about James Salter in Wikipedia

Random Authors

James Salter Quotes

The normal economic system works itself.

Economic, Economic Systems, Normal, System, Works

It seems to me that literature is giving way a little bit to the immediacy of other diversions, other forms of entertainment. What will it be in fifty years? I don't know. Will there be printed books? Probably, but I'm not sure. There's always going to be literature, though. I believe that. I think literature has a way of getting deep into people and being essential. Literature has its own powers.

Believe, Book, Essential, Literature, Think, Thinking

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.

Fact, Fear, Philosophical, Philosophy, Preoccupation, Real

They lay silently. She was staring at something across the room. She was making him feel uncomfortable. 'It wouldn't work. It's the attraction of opposites,' he said. We're not opposites. ' I don't mean just you and me. 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.

Falling In Love, Lay, Making, Mean, Men

ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.

Dreamed, Lasts, Life, Realization, Realizations

If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.

Start, Way, Write, Writing, Zero

Then it was intoxicating. The smooth takeoff, and the free feeling of having the world drop away. Soon after leaving the ground, they were crossing patches of stratus that lay in the valleys as heavy and white as glaciers. North for the first time. It was still an adventure, as exciting as love, as frightening.

Adventure, Having, Leaving, Love, White

Dresscodes are for styleless people.

Dresscodes, People, Styleless

Normally, what you’re envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels … almost nonexistent things.

Book, Ideas, Levels, Things

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.

Effort, Ideas, Progress, Words, Writing

The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.

Dream, Dreams, Reality, Skeleton, Skeletons

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

Aristocracy, Beauty, Feelings, Hierarchical, Like

One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.

Believe, Easily, Should, Strongly, Vanish

It's just that it's hard to believe in greatness.

Believe, Greatness, Hard, Hard To Believe

Events need their invitation, dissolutions their start.

Dissolutions, Events, Invitations, Needs, Start

One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change.

Further, Future, Past, Patterns, Real

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.

Girl, Party, Long, Appeal, Writer

A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold.

Cold, Light, Manifestation, Nothing, Snow

You lived and died alone, especially in fighters. Fighters. Somehow, despite everything, that word had not become sterile. You slipped into the hollow cockpit and strapped and plugged yourself into the machine. The canopy ground shut and sealed you off. Your oxygen, your very breath, you carried into the chilled vacuum, in a steel bottle.

Bottle, Chilled, Ground, Oxygen, Steel, Vacuums

You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you know and what you experience. And this is undeniable.

Colored, Experience, Ideas, People, Perception, Writing

1