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

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

— James Salter

Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.

— James Salter

“It was love, the furnace into which everything was dropped.”

— James Salter

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

— James Salter

I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be.

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.

— James Salter

A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold.

— James Salter

West Pointers tend to be rigorously honest - more than necessary, in my view.

— James Salter

Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it, the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with…

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

It was not until I began to write a book called 'Light Years' that an editor really stepped in. The editor was…

— James Salter

“They had a great deal in common, Bowman a little defiantly said. What they had in common was more vital than similar…

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

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

— 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

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

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

They lay silently. She was staring at something across the room. She was making him feel uncomfortable. 'It wouldn't work. It's the…

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

Age doesn't arrive slowly, it comes in a rush. One day nothing has changed, a week later, everything has. A week may…

— James Salter

I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be. It's wrong to say "everybody," but…

— James Salter

In the war time many of the publishing houses were privately owned, a single publisher or a publisher and a few associates…

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

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

— 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

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

— 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

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

— James Salter