Latest James Salter Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• It seems to me that literature is giving way a little bit to the immediacy of other diversions, other forms of entertainment. What will it be in fifty years? I don't know. Will there be printed books? Probably, but I'm not sure. There's always going to be literature, though. I believe that. I think literature has a way of getting deep into people and being essential. Literature has its own powers.

  James Salter

  Believe, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• You would have to be very optimistic to think that any of your books will be among the books that survive in the very long run. I think if a writer is lucky enough to still have a few books around after he's gone, a few that are still being read, then he's accomplished quite a lot.

  James Salter

  Running, Book, Optimistic

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'd given up everything to be a writer, and if I didn't then go on to do that - to write - then I didn't know what would happen to me.

  James Salter

  Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• In climbing, being first-rate is part of the whole enterprise. The important climbers want to be the first man up the mountain, the one who put up the first route. You're usually only remembered if you put up the first route on a very important climb. The route might even be named after you. That's a kind of glory.

  James Salter

  Men, Important, Mountain

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• You write for glory. You play for glory. There's an ambition to excel, isn't there, to be a star? To score more, to do more, even when it's a team sport. So I think striving for glory is a natural subject for a writer. Seeking fame.

  James Salter

  Sports, Team, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  James Salter

  Character, World, Revelations

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Being somebody: it's one of the ideas in life, no? That's what my father made clear to me. The importance of being somebody. He wanted to be somebody. And he underlined to me the fate of trying to be somebody and not quite managing to do it.

  James Salter

  Father, Fate, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Amplitude is a powerful quality in fiction. It results in involvement, in sympathy with the characters. After a while, a reader can't avoid being involved with a book, caring about it, even if it's not a particularly good book. You're in it, and you're committed to it.

  James Salter

  Powerful, Book, Character

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• In the war time many of the publishing houses were privately owned, a single publisher or a publisher and a few associates who were responsible for everything. They could take whatever risks they wanted, could essentially publish what they liked according to their taste. Publishers today are working for big corporations. They have different pressures. I don't think they can make decisions quite as independently as they used to be able to. They have more corporate and financial responsibilities weighing on them. They're not free to go broke or go to jail.

  James Salter

  War, Responsibility, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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 to get it. If you don't get it the first time you may not understand. If you like repetition, analysis, explanation, you probably won't like my books.

  James Salter

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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 inaccurate. You can't have been reading my book with any kind of attention, because that is all wrong, that's even the wrong name you're including there." But these reviewers have been diminished in importance, the work is so little respected. If you're reviewed by a real critic, by James Wood or Louis Menand, then you get something that is informed, interesting, and highly articulate. But the average review doesn't have that kind of depth anymore.

  James Salter

  Real, Reading, Book

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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 hard to come by, details that I can look at and believe are right on the mark. Things which bring a novel to life. They can take a while to come.

  James Salter

  Notebook, Believe, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  James Salter

  World, This World, This Life

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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

  James Salter

  People, Want, Scripts

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.You could claim that it's due to my military experience. But it came before that. I love their freedom of behavior. They're not constrained by penal attitudes, puritanical attitudes about behavior, both socially and morally. They have a freedom that I admire. An unquestioned freedom.

  James Salter

  Attitude, Military, Feelings

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• In general, American life is more easy-going. And civic pride, national pride in a cultural sense, is great in America. I think what they esteem in America is character and energy, and being different and superior to other peoples. Of course, every nation feels itself to be superior, but in America it's a jaunty feeling, and in some cases a rather ominous one among the super-patriots.

  James Salter

  Character, Pride, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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 in literature I see it all the time - preoccupation with it, philosophical preoccupation, in fact. That's a principle element of literature and philosophy, often cited as the main element, the only real element. I say give it up.

  James Salter

  Philosophy, Real, Philosophical

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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

  Want, Topics, Certain

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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

  James Salter

  Way, Fear Of Death, Obsessed

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com