Irwin Shaw Quotes
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No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.
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The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.
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In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.
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I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?
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My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.
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I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.
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Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing.
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Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.
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I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.
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At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.
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I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.
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In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.
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Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.
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Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.
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If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.
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I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.
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A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.
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Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.
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I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.
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Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.