James Salter Quotes & Sayings

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

She preferred to lie up by the dunes with the waves bursting, to listen while they crashed like the final chords of a symphony except they went on and on. There was nothing as fine as that. — 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 gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling - it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don't want to have the same vocabulary I've always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful. — James Salter

I always knew writing a novel was a great thing. — James Salter

You are perfectly entitled to invent your life and to claim that it's true. — James Salter

If you can think of life, for a moment, as a large house with a nursery, living and dining rooms, bedrooms, study, and so forth, all unfamiliar and bright, the chapters which follow are, in a way, like looking through the windows of this house. Certain occupants will be glimpsed only briefly. Visitors come and go. At some windows you may wish to stay longer, but alas. As with any house, all within cannot be seen. — James Salter

Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are the only source from which may be drawn a life more successful, more knowing than our own. Somehow they will do one thing, take one step further, they will see the summit. We believe in it, the radiance that streams from the future, from days we will not see. Children must live, must triumph. Children must die; that is an idea we cannot accept. — James Salter

He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two. — James Salter

When she said goodbye it was like a play ending. It was like the theater and coming out again to the streets. — James Salter

Dresscodes are for styleless people. — James Salter

Do you know what Krisnamurti says? Consciously or unconsciously we are all completely selfish, and as long as we get what we want, we believe everything is all right.
'Getting what we want ... but is that happiness ?'
'I don't know. I know that not getting what you want is certainly unhappiness — James Salter

A film writer is very much like a party girl. While you're good-looking and still unlined, the possibilities seem endless. But your appeal doesn't last long and you're quickly discarded. — James Salter

The writing workshops and programs that are everywhere have encouraged writing. And if that produces more writing, it's also producing more readers of an elevated level. So all in all, a good thing. — 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

Happiness is often at its most intense when it is based on inequality. — James Salter

Now they are lovers. The first, wild courses are ended. They have founded their domain. A satanic happiness follows. — James Salter

There was a time, usually late in August, when summer struck the trees with dazzling power and they were rich with leaves but then became, suddenly one day, strangely still, as if in expectation and at that moment aware. They knew. Everything knew, the beetles, the frogs, the crows solemnly walking across the lawn. The sun was at its zenith and embraced the world, but it was ending, all that one loved was at risk. — James Salter

He walks toward the river, placing his feet carefully. His suit is too warm and tight. He reaches the water's edge. There is the dock, unused now, with its flaking paint and rotten boards, its underpilings drenched in green. Here at the great, dark river, here on the bank. It happens in an instant. It is all one long day, one endless afternoon, friends leave, we stand on the shore. Yes, he thought, I am ready, I have always been ready, I am ready at last. — James Salter

Life passes into pages if it passes into anything. — James Salter

One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish. — James Salter

If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing. — James Salter

Written pages are something that can be returned to, reclaimed, and when they are marvelous, never lose their power. — James Salter

There were other houses that always brought images of an orderly life, kitchens with plain sideboards, old windows, the comforts of marriage in their common form, which at times surpassed everything - breakfast in the morning, conversations, late hours, and nothing that suggested excess or decay. — James Salter

For those we are born to speak to we need prepare nothing, the lines are ready, everything is there. — James Salter

You must go further than I did," Nedra said. "You know that."
"Further?"
"With your life. You must become free."
She did not explain it; she could not. It was not a matter of living alone, though in her case this had been necessary. The freedom she meant was self-conquest. It was not a natural state. It was meant only for those who would risk everything for it, who were aware that without it life is only appetites until the teeth are gone. — James Salter

We were moderate, we will never know what it is to spill out our lives ... — James Salter

None of this is true. I've said Autun, but it could easily have been Auxerre. I'm sure you'll come to realize that. I am only putting down details which entered me, fragments that were able to part my flesh. It's a story of things that never existed although even the faintest doubt of that, the smallest possibility, plunges everything into darkness. I only want whoever reads this to be as resigned as I am. There's enough passion in the world already. Everything trembles with it. Not that I believe it shouldn't exist, no, no, but this is only a thin, reflecting sliver which somehow keeps catching the light. — James Salter

The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not. — James Salter

It is always an accident that saves us. It is someone we have never seen. — James Salter

He knew all the constellations. He had seen them rise in darkness over heartbreaking coasts. — James Salter

You lived and died alone, especially in fighters. Fighters. Somehow, despite everything, that word had not become sterile. You slipped into the hollow cockpit and strapped and plugged yourself into the machine. The canopy ground shut and sealed you off. Your oxygen, your very breath, you carried into the chilled vacuum, in a steel bottle. — James Salter

Summer mornings, the light of the world pouring in and the silence. It was a barefoot life, the cool of the night on the floorboards, the green trees if you stepped outside, the first faint cries of the birds. He arrived in a suit and didn't put it on again until he went back to the city. — James Salter

I wasted time writing films. I don't look back on those years as lost, but it wasn't what I should have been doing. — James Salter

He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older. — James Salter

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

She formed her life day by day, taking as its materials the emptiness and panic as well as the rushes, like fever, of contentment. I am beyond fear of solitude, she thought, I am past it. The idea thrilled her. I am beyond it and I will not sink. This submission, this triumph made her stronger. It was as if finally, after having passed through inferior stages, her life had found a form worthy of it. — James Salter

On the Internet, everyone is writing. There is a great flowering of writing. — 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

'The Paris Review' was always the pinnacle: it was the place to be published. You were thrilled if you were published in 'The Paris Review,' and George Plimpton himself was practically mythical. He was a legendary figure. — James Salter

Anne-Marie Costallat, born October 8, 1944. I was beginning high school and masturbating twice a day, curling over it like a dead leaf, when she was born, in a bed of violets, as she says - all French mothers tell their children that. — James Salter

It's possible of course, especially when you're young, to read a book and take it to your heart. And you don't need to speak to anybody about it - it's so important to you: You have found it. — James Salter

Solitude. One knows instinctively it has benefits that must be more deeply satisfying than those of other conditions, but still it is difficult. — James Salter

One feels pan of a vast servitude, anonymous and unending, all of it vanishing unexpectedly with the passing image of Madame Picquet behind the glass of her office, that faintly vulgar, thrilling profile. As I think of it, there's an ache in my chest. I cannot control these dreams in which she seems to lie in my future like a whole season of extravagant meals if only I knew how to arrange it. — James Salter

The death of kings can be recited, but not of one's child. — James Salter

Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.
And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see. — James Salter

Jivan: You think when you have love that love is easy to find, that everyone has it. It's not true. It's very hard to find.
Nedra: I haven't been looking for it.
Jivan: It's like a tree ... It takes a long time to grow. It has roots very deep, and these roots stretch out a long way, farther than you know. You can't cut it, just like that. — James Salter

The normal economic system works itself. — 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 attraction of opposites,' he said.
We're not opposites.'
I don't mean just you and me. Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave. — James Salter

His devotion is complete; he is beginning to sense the confusion that arises from the first fears of what life would be like without her. He knows there can be such a thing, but like the answer to a difficult problem, he cannot imagine it. — James Salter

Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense. — James Salter

But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. — James Salter

It was love, the furnace into which everything was dropped. — James Salter

The heart is in darkness, unknowing, like those animals in mines that have never seen the day. It has no loyalties, no hopes; it has its task. — James Salter

There is no happiness like this: quiet mornings, light from the river, the weekend ahead. They lived a Russian life, a rich life, interwoven, in which the misfortune of one would stagger them all. It was a garment, this life. Its beauty outside, its warmth within. — James Salter

God is the God of the people who are at their wits end, who are right up against it with their backs to the wall, and He delights to come to our help when we need Him most. — James Salter

That night she heard the branches tapping against the house and the window frames rattle. She sat alone and thought of the geese, she could hear them out there. It had gotten cold. The wind was blowing their feathers. They lived a long time, ten or fifteen years, they said. The one they had seen on the lawn might still be alive, settled back into the fields with the others, in from the ocean where they went to be safe, the survivors of bloody ambushes. Somewhere in the wet grass, she imagined, lay one of them, dark sodden breast, graceful neck still extended, great wings striving to beat, bloody sounds coming from the holes in its beak. She went around and turned on the lights. The rain was coming down, the sea was crashing, a comrade lay dead in the whirling darkness. — James Salter

There are men who seem destined to always go first, to lead the way. They are confident in life, they are the first to go beyond it. Whatever there is to know, they learn before others. Their very existence gives strength and drives one onward. Love and jealousy were mingled there in the darkness, love and despair. — James Salter

I would say that I am a jaded man beyond most expectations, but, like everyone else, I still have hope. — James Salter

It was not until I began to write a book called 'Light Years' that an editor really stepped in. The editor was Joe Fox at Random House, and he wound up editing a subsequent book. — James Salter

Your parents are the parents you know best. Your brother and sister, if you have them, are the brother and sister you know best. They may not be the ones you like the best. They may not be the most interesting, but they are the closest and probably the clearest to you. — James Salter

I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist. — James Salter

I've made an effort to nurture the feminine in myself. I don't mean overtly, but in terms of response to things. — James Salter

It was easy to find things she would like. Our taste was the same, it had been from the first. It would be impossible to live with someone otherwise. I've always thought it was the most important single thing, though people may not realize it. Perhaps it's transmitted to them in the way someone dresses or, for that matter, undresses, but taste is a thing no one is born with, it's learned, and at a certain point it can't be altered. We sometimes talked about that, what could and couldn't be altered. People were always saying something had completely changed them, some experience or book or man, but if you knew how they had been before, nothing much really had changed. When you found someone who was tremendously appealing but not quite perfect, you might believe you could change them after marriage, not everything, just a few things, but in truth the most you could expect was to change perhaps one thing and even that would eventually go back to what it had been. — James Salter

It's ahead of us. All I can tell you is, not even courage will help." "Are you reading Alma Mahler again?" "No." Her voice was even and knowing. The underground river. The ceiling lowers, grows wet, the water rushes into darkness. The air becomes damp and icy, the passage narrows. Light is lost here, sound; the current begins to flow beneath great, impassable slabs. — James Salter

DEAD FLIES ON THE SILLS OF sunny windows, weeds along the pathway, the kitchen empty. The house was melancholy, deceiving; it was like a cathedral where, amid the serenity, something is false, the saints are made of florist's wax, the organ has been gutted. — James Salter

Normally, what you're envious of is a book, not a writer: standards, ideas, levels ... almost nonexistent things. — James Salter

The classic decision is always the same, whether to retreat or go on. There comes a time when it is easier to continue upward, when the summit, in fact, is the only way out. At such a moment one must still have strength. — James Salter

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

Love must wait; it must break one's bones. — James Salter

The most devout moments of my life have been spent in bed at night listening to those bells. They flood over me, drawing me out of myself. I know where I am suddenly; part of this town and happy. I lean out of the window and am washed by the cool air, air it seems no one has yet breathed. — James Salter

People have reflected on the quality of time ever since they've been writing. I suppose I have thought about and written about the question of living in the present - but it only lasts for an instant, and then everything becomes the past. The future, you know nothing about, except for some anticipations you have. — James Salter

WE DASH THE BLACK RIVER, ITS flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind. This great estuary is wide, endless. The river is brackish, blue with the cold. It passes beneath us blurring. The sea birds hang above it, they wheel, disappear. We flash the wide river, a dream of the past. The deeps fall behind, the bottom is paling the surface, we rush by the shallows, boats beached for winter, desolate piers. And on wings like the gulls, soar up, turn, look back. — James Salter

There came a time when I felt I was not going to be satisfied with life unless I could write. — James Salter

You can't be admitted to the ranks of writers of importance unless you have sales. — James Salter

The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another. — James Salter

I think you can be taught to write. You can't be taught to be a good writer. For that, you have to bring something to it, yourself, something that can't be given to you. — James Salter

My ideal is a book that is perfect on every page, that gives you tremendous aesthetic joy on every page. I suppose I am trying to write such a book. — James Salter

Although I've made notes for things and even written synopses sitting in trains or on park benches, for the complete composition of things I need absolute solitude, preferably an empty house. — James Salter

They had a great deal in common, Bowman a little defiantly said. What they had in common was more vital than similar interests
it was wordless understanding and accord. It was love, the furnace into which everything is dropped. — James Salter

There is no situation like the open road, and seeing things completely afresh. I'm used to traveling. It's not a question of meeting or seeing new faces particularly, or hearing new stories, but of looking at life in a different way. It's the curtain coming up on another act. — James Salter

I've known the anxiety of being completely lost, flying at night. It can be extreme. You're travelling at close to five hundred miles an hour, and every minute that goes by takes you further into being lost unless you get help from ground radar somewhere or somehow figure out the error. — James Salter

My first book was published without any editorial advice. Nobody said, 'You might do this or that,' or 'Why don't we see more of this.' I merely took the book and published it. — James Salter

I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you must remember that — James Salter

I have said many times I don't want to be considered one who once flew fighters. That's not who I am. I devoted the subsequent 50 years - more - to writing. — James Salter

The great chandeliers hang silent. The tables in the vast dining room overlooking the lake are spread with white cloth and silver as if for dinners before the war. At a little after 4, into the green room with the slow walk of aged people, the Nabokovs come. He wears a navy blue cardigan, a blue-checked shirt, gray slacks and a tie. His shoes have crepe soles. He is balding, with a fringe of gray hair. His hazel-green eyes are watering, oysterous, as he says. He is 75, born on the same day as Shakespeare, April 23. He is at the end of a great career, a career half-carved out of a language not his own. — James Salter

Alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life
it was not worth much
not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one
we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist. — James Salter

I write in longhand. I am accustomed to that proximity, that feel of writing. Then I sit down and type. — James Salter

He had never been particularly young, or to put it another way, he had been young for a long time and now was at his true age, old enough for civilized comfrots and not too old for the primal ones. — James Salter

The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one's life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others? — James Salter

They ate dinner in silence. Her husband did not look at her. her face annoyed him, he did not know why. She could be good-looking but there were times when she was not. Her face was like a series of photographs, some of which ought to have been thrown away. Tonight it was like that. — James Salter

I don't hold myself dictated to by what everyone is saying, by the tabloids or popular opinion. I don't like bourgeois values. I say you find your own way to live. — James Salter

Eve was tall. Her face had cheekbones. Her shoulders slumped when she walked. The shelves in her living room were bent beneath the books. She worked for a publisher; oh, you've heard of him, she said.
Her life was one in which everything was left undone - letters unanswered, bills on the floor, the butter sitting out all night. Perhaps that was why her husband had left her; he was even more hopeless than she. At least she was gay. She stepped from her littered doorway in pretty clothes, like a woman who lives in the barrio walking to a limousine, stray dogs and dirt on the way. — James Salter

I knew what my father, more than anything else, wanted me to do. Seventeen, vain, and spoiled by poems, I prepared to enter a remote West Point. I would succeed there, it was hoped, as he had. — James Salter

The publishers, as I remember at the very beginning of my career, wrote letters with their fountain pens. A letter is different from a phone call or fax. It's a different kind of intimacy. That pervaded the entire business of writing and publishing. — James Salter

His world was small, an illiterate county seat, a backward state, though from it he fashioned something greater, far greater perhaps than he ever knew. A writer cannot really grasp what he has written. It is not like a building or a sculpture; it cannot be seen whole. It is only a kind of smoke seized and printed on a page. — James Salter

Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer. — James Salter

He longs for the one line to give them that they will always remember, that will embrace everything, that will point the way, but he cannot find the line, he cannot recognize it. It is more precious, he knows, than anything else they might own, but he does not have it. — James Salter

If you can overcome the occasional angst, you may have the chance to see some interesting things, perhaps the same things the tour buses bring people to see, but purified by solitude, if you will. In any case, do not stay in the hotel room. That is the only place you are vulnerable. — James Salter

We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun. — James Salter

When he undressed at night he was like a diplomat or a judge. A white body, gentle and powerless, emerged from his clothes, his position in the world lay tumbled on the floor, fallen from his ankles ... — James Salter