Irwin Shaw Quotes & Sayings

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans. — Irwin Shaw

Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody. — Irwin Shaw

When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed ... I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it. — Irwin Shaw

Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House. — Irwin Shaw

When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls, all on parade in the city. I don't know whether it's something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I'm at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near the women in the theaters, the famous beauties who've taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses ... — Irwin Shaw

You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish. — Irwin Shaw

The abuse of alcohol," Mr. Parrish said in a solemn, preacher-like voice, as he reached for his glass, "is the one thing that puts Man above the animal. — Irwin Shaw

There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough. — Irwin Shaw

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves. — Irwin Shaw

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever. — Irwin Shaw

Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own. — Irwin Shaw

Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American. — Irwin Shaw

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship. — Irwin Shaw

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much. — Irwin Shaw

Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory. — Irwin Shaw

Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing. — Irwin Shaw

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober. — Irwin Shaw

I make it a point to look as healthy and attractive as I can at all times," Boylan had explained to Rudolph. "Even if I don't see anybody for weeks on end. It's a form of self-respect. — Irwin Shaw

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy. — Irwin Shaw

I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various. — Irwin Shaw

This time it is not a simple, understandable war, within the same culture. This time it is an assault of the animal world upon the house of the human being. I don't know what you saw in Africa and Italy, but I know what I saw in Russia and Poland. We made a cemetery a thousand miles long and a thousand miles wide. Men, women, children, Poles, Russians, Jews, it made no difference. It could not be compared to any human action. It could be compared to a weasel in a henhouse. It was as though we felt that if we left anything alive in the East, it would one day bear witness against us and condemn us. And, now, we have made the final mistake. We are losing the war — Irwin Shaw

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 his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises. — Irwin Shaw

Why does a man spend fifty years of his life in an occupation that is often painful? I once told a class I was teaching that writing is an intellectual contact sport, similar in some respects to football. The effort required can be exhausting, the goal unreached, and you are hurt on almost every play; but that doesn't deprive a man or a boy from getting peculiar pleasures from the game. — Irwin Shaw

If the players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds. — Irwin Shaw

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms. — Irwin Shaw

In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that. — Irwin Shaw

I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself. — Irwin Shaw

I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it. — Irwin Shaw

It was the most banal idea about a war, Michael knew, that if of fatality, but it was impossible not to think of it, impossible not to think of the casual threads of accident on which we survive to face the next if that comes tomorrow. — Irwin Shaw

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 of the field. I casually inspect the universe. — Irwin Shaw

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 world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself. — Irwin Shaw

I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it. — Irwin Shaw

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing. — Irwin Shaw

People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly. — Irwin Shaw

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it. — Irwin Shaw

My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me. — Irwin Shaw

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written. — Irwin Shaw

He was an indifferent Christian but the afternoon called for gratitude and belief. — Irwin Shaw

Hazen had already begun to mix her a martini. She watched approvingly. "Martinis make everything worthwhile, don't they?" she said, smiling at Strand. — Irwin Shaw

The world," said Pavone, "will swing to the left. The whole world except America. The world will swing, not because people read Karl Marx, or because agitators will come out of Russia, but because, after the war is over, that will be the only way they can turn. Everything else will have been tried, everything else will have failed. And I am afraid that American will be isolated, hated, backward, we will all be living there like old maids in a lonely house in the woods, locking the doors, looking under the beds, with a fortune in the mattress, not being able to sleep, because every time the wind blows and a floor creaks, we will think the murderers are breaking in to kill us and take our treasure ... — Irwin Shaw

I'm older now, I'm a man getting near middle age, putting on a little fat and I still love to walk along Fifth Avenue at three o'clock on the east side of the street between Fiftieth and Fifty-seventh streets, they're all out then, making believe they're shopping, in their furs and their crazy hats, everything all concentrated from all over the world into eight blocks, the best furs, the best clothes, the handsomest women, out to spend money and feeling good about it, looking coldly at you, making believe they're not looking at you as you go past. — Irwin Shaw

A writer has to live with a sense of honor. — Irwin Shaw

The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out. — Irwin Shaw

A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor. — Irwin Shaw

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 not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well ... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven. — Irwin Shaw

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel? — Irwin Shaw

At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded. — Irwin Shaw

It is always necessary to remain barbarians, because it is the barbarians who always win. — Irwin Shaw

My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have. — Irwin Shaw

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys the writing, even if he doesn't get paid for it. — Irwin Shaw

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody. — Irwin Shaw

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all. — Irwin Shaw

A taste of luxury is part of the education of any intelligent human being. It teaches him how unnecessary it is. — Irwin Shaw

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices. — Irwin Shaw

You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer. — Irwin Shaw

All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one. — Irwin Shaw

Are these the people, created in greatness by the work of Jefferson and Franklin, he thought, are these the bitter farmers and hunters and craftsmen who came out of the wilderness, furious for liberty and justice, is this the new world of giants sung by Whitman? — Irwin Shaw

Now,' Elias said, 'if only I didn't have to go home to my lousy wife. I married her in 1929. A lot of things've changed since 1929.' He sighed. 'What's a woman?' he asked. 'A Woman is a trap. — Irwin Shaw

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form. — Irwin Shaw

I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal. — Irwin Shaw

In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75. — Irwin Shaw

Our imperfections are the bonds that hold us together. We might as well recognize them. — Irwin Shaw

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young. — Irwin Shaw

It had been off-hand and flattering, in exactly the proper proportions, and Louise had cleverly erected a thin shield of something that was less than and better than love to protect him from the comic, unending abuse of the Army. And, now, it was probably over. Women, Michael thought resentfully, can never learn the art of being transients. They are all permanent settlers at heart, making homes with dull, instinctive persistence in floods and wars, on the edges of invasions, at the moment of the crumbling of states. No, he thought, I will not have it. For my own protection I am going to get through this time alone ... — Irwin Shaw

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life. — Irwin Shaw

The writer works in a lonely way. — Irwin Shaw