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
-
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.
-
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.
-
It's nice to work with your own alma mater.
-
Beelzebub is the isolated part of the human being. This part or this real human being has been obscured by religious structures.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.
-
Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility.
-
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.
-
People call me a hermit. But I'm happy.
-
I love to conduct opera.
-
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.
-
I will go to what they call a court. Only they call it a court.
-
Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.
-
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.
-
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.
-
One year's poor form remains a blip but if it happens next year, you can say it's a trend.
-
You are what you eat, and you make what you hear.
-
Anger that has no limit causes terror, and unseasonable kindness does away with respect. Be not so severe as to cause disgust, nor so lenient as to make people presume.
-
I'm not Russell Crowe. I'm not going to do a period piece.
-
Why do economists fall in love with authoritarian governments?
-
Being an African filmmaker, Africa is what's important for me. If I were to shot a film in France or elsewhere it would only be because the story that was being told was something that concerned me, and that really called me or needed to be shown on the screen.
-
The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not.
