Skip to content

Life Quotes by James Salter

42 Life quotes by James Salter

All Life quotes James Salter’s page

James Salter reminds us that life can disappear as quickly as a breath. He compares the marks we carry to the rings inside a tree, showing how each experience becomes a scar. He also suggests that life is made of many fragments, not a single, complete story.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Life passes into pages if it passes into anything,

Image

Life is weather. Life is meals,

Image

“She comes to life with a soft exhausted sound, like someone saved from drowning.”

Image

“One should not believe too easily in a life which can easily vanish.”

Image

“Life is separated by scars, like the rings in the inside of a tree.”

Image

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

Image

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

Image

As I look back, I see that life is like a game of solitaire and every once in a while there is…

Image

It's tremendous: this world, this life. Take it while you have it.

Image

ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.

Image

“There are men who seem to have seized the trunk of life, and he was one of them. It might not be…

Image

You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is…

Image

Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am…

Image

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

Image

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.…

Image

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

Image

Being somebody: it's one of the ideas in life, no? That's what my father made clear to me. The importance of being…

Image

“The freedom she meant was self-conquest. It was not a natural state. It was meant only for those who would risk everything…

Image

I like men who have known the best and the worst, whose life has been anything but a smooth trip. Storms have…

Image

I'm tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I'm hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of…

Image

“He had his life—it was not worth much—not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had…

Image

“You must go further than I did," Nedra said. "You know that." "Further?" "With your life. You must become free." She did…

Image

Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other sumptuous love which made one…

Image

“...at a luncheon, I sat next to a green-eyed young woman, a poet, who declared loftily that you learned nothing from books,…

Image

“There is no happiness like this: quiet mornings, light from the river, the weekend ahead. They lived a Russian life, a rich…

Image

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

Image

“Every object, even those which had been hers, which he never touched, seemed to share his loss. He was suddenly parted from…

Image

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

Image

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

Image

“Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but…

Image

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

Image

“...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had…

Image

“Miyata was fluent and intelligent. Nothing was beyond his curiosity. He seemed to be above the confusion of life, as if he…

Image

“There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.”

Image

One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.

Image

But that isn't my life. I have said many times I don't want to be considered one who once flew fighters. That's…

Image

Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are…

Image

In general, American life is more easy-going. And civic pride, national pride in a cultural sense, is great in America. I think…

Image

There is no situation like the open road, and seeing things completely afresh. I'm used to traveling. It's not a question of…

Image

The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a…

Image

Other authors on Life

More by James Salter

It seems to me that literature is giving way a little bit to the immediacy of other diversions, other forms of entertainment. What will…

Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave

Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.

I write in longhand. I am accustomed to that proximity, that feel of writing. Then I sit down and type.

A writer writes a book. People read it. You don't know what they're reading, really. You read a review and think, "That is so…

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

Normally, what you’re envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels … almost nonexistent things.

Sometimes I write with a particular person in mind. I think it's fair to say that I write for a perceptive reader. You have…

Lots of scripts are written and not made, even scripts that people want to make.

I'd given up everything to be a writer, and if I didn't then go on to do that - to write - then I…

“One should not believe too easily in a life which can easily vanish.”

“Life is separated by scars, like the rings in the inside of a tree.”

“Dean is still asleep. His clothes are strewn about. The shutters are closed. He never dreams. He’s like a dead musician, like a spent…

The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.

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