Irwin Shaw Quotes
71 quotes
in 639 categories
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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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Every novelist has a different purpose-and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
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An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the…
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If football players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.
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Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
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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…
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The writer works in a lonely way.
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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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Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.
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All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.
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I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers…
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Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is…
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A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.
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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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Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.
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Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing
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In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75
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I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life
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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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