James Salter Quotes

38 Sourced Quotes

The notion that anything can be invented wholly and that these invented things are classified as fiction and that other writing, presumably not made up, is called nonfiction strikes me as a very arbitrary separation of things.

James Salter
I didn't know what made me write at the beginning, but later I understood. It's simple: the one who writes it keeps it.

James Salter
France is herself Only in the winter, her naked self, without manners. In the fine weather, all the world can love her.

James Salter
One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change.

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 be too long a time, it can happen overnight. You are the same and still the same and suddenly one morning two distinct lines, ineradicable, have appeared at the corners of your mouth.

James Salter
He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.

James Salter
You're so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.

James Salter
I find the most difficult part of writing is to get it down initially because what you have written is usually so terrible that it's disheartening, you don't want to go on.

James Salter