James Salter

Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.

— James Salter

Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer.

— James Salter

The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.

— James Salter

Events need their invitation, dissolutions their start.

— James Salter

I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.

— James Salter

In 1957, I decided: write or perish.

— James Salter

Life passes into pages if it passes into anything,

— James Salter

I've always said that I felt women are more heroic.

— James Salter

I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist.

— James Salter

Now they are lovers. The first, wild courses are ended. They have founded their domain. A satanic happiness follows.

— James Salter

Dialogue's a method of revelation, of course. A few words of dialogue can reveal worlds about a character.

— James Salter

There came a time when I felt I was not going to be satisfied with life unless I could write.

— James Salter

“He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older.”

— James Salter

You are perfectly entitled to invent your life and to claim that it's true.

— James Salter

It is always an accident that saves us. It is someone we have never seen.

— James Salter

Happiness is often at its most intense when it is based on inequality.

— James Salter

“One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devotion. It…

— James Salter

“As I think of it, there’s an ache in my chest. I cannot control these dreams in which she seems to lie…

— James Salter

In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life…

— James Salter

He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk,…

— James Salter

The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four -the years turn dry as…

— James Salter

I'd say the biggest relationship is the repetition of certain themes. I don't want to say "topics," but certain points of interest.

— James Salter

“Anne-Marie Costallat, born October 8, 1944. I was beginning high school and masturbating twice a day, curling over it like a dead…

— James Salter

The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be…

— James Salter

Amplitude is a powerful quality in fiction. It results in involvement, in sympathy with the characters. After a while, a reader can't…

— James Salter

“DEAD FLIES ON THE SILLS OF sunny windows, weeds along the pathway, the kitchen empty. The house was melancholy, deceiving; it was…

— James Salter

“They ate dinner in silence. Her husband did not look at her. her face annoyed him, he did not know why. She…

— James Salter

In climbing, being first-rate is part of the whole enterprise. The important climbers want to be the first man up the mountain,…

— James Salter

But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside.…

— James Salter

The publishers, as I remember at the very beginning of my career, wrote letters with their fountain pens. A letter is different…

— James Salter

When I'm filling notebooks I'm trying to pin down what I'm really interested in and to find those details that are so…

— James Salter

“Greatness is something which can be regarded in a number of ways,” he said. “It is, of course, the apotheosis, man raised…

— James Salter

“Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of…

— James Salter

“The Montreux Palace Hotel was built in an age when it was thought that things would last. It is on the very…

— James Salter

“Strauss’s, for instance, which begins in the heavens. The artist doesn’t ascend to glory, he appears in it, he already has it…

— James Salter

“Gertrude Stein, when asked why she wrote, replied "For praise." Lorca said he wrote to be loved. Faulkner said a writer wrote…

— James Salter

“I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in which life…

— James Salter

“Either that,” he said, “or it comes true later. I’ll tell you another story. There was a father who gave his son…

— James Salter

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards. Why is…

— James Salter

“Eve was tall. Her face had cheekbones. Her shoulders slumped when she walked. The shelves in her living room were bent beneath…

— James Salter