James Salter Quotes
The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not.
Quotes to Explore
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To some degree we all live with uncertainty. We have no control over the future. Yet we carry on, we persevere, because, I guess, it's the way we're made.
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I had a very brilliant father who was not only intellectual, but was street-smart and very curious to boot. The day I found out that he didn't know everything, I grew up. It was a shock. I just thought that the man was the end-all of everything, and he knew the answer to everything. Then I found out I'd have to find out my own answers.
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It's nice to work with your own alma mater.
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Blessed with Mom and Dad's remarkable genes, raised on big words and big, iconoclastic attitudes, Larry and I, before entering kindergarten, knew who we were, what we wanted, and how we would get there.
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I had a crazy life for a teenager. I lived in New Jersey, but I'd go to Vermont for three weeks, join a commune, take pictures with the guy I was dating, come back home, and post photos.
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Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
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The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.
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Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility.
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It's kind of a funny way to put it, but if you want to study a dynamic economic system, what you'd like to be able to do is focus on the linkages, say, between asset markets and the macro economy without having to model everything at the same time.
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People call me a hermit. But I'm happy.
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I love to conduct opera.
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If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.
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I will go to what they call a court. Only they call it a court.
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Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.
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Right whales - so named because they were 'the right whale to kill' - grazed the waters off Nantucket as if they were seagoing cattle, straining the nutrient-rich surface of the ocean through the bushy plates of baleen in their perpetually grinning mouths.
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Since I started in Nascar, popularity has definitely gone up. I've become more attractive and helpful to companies that are looking for spokespersons. So from that perspective, things are going really well.
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One year's poor form remains a blip but if it happens next year, you can say it's a trend.
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You are what you eat, and you make what you hear.
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Sometimes it seems like there's more footnotes than text. This isn't something we're proud of, and over time we'd like to see our footnotes steadily shrink.
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I used to hate flying. I would sit there, rigid, convinced that if I relaxed, the plane would drop out of the sky.
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We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes ... not looking at certain things. Everybody's got some blind spot.
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The sweet converse of an innocent mind.
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My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions…. The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill….
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The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not.
