James Salter Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.
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My first book was published without any editorial advice. Nobody said, 'You might do this or that,' or 'Why don't we see more of this.' I merely took the book and published it.
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I've made an effort to nurture the feminine in myself. I don't mean overtly, but in terms of response to things.
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The death of kings can be recited, but not of one's child.
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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.
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Every nation feels itself to be superior, but in America it's a jaunty feeling, and in some cases a rather ominous one among the super-patriots.
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Most writers can write three times as many books as I have and still live a life.
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I find the most difficult part of writing is to get it down initially because what you have written is usually so terrible that it's disheartening; you don't want to go on. That's what I think is hard - the discouragement that comes from seeing what you have done.
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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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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.
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Written pages are something that can be returned to, reclaimed, and when they are marvelous, never lose their power.