James Salter quotes

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real. (James Salter)
A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold. View quote
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. View quote
James Salter
I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling. View quote
James Salter
I always knew writing a novel was a great thing. View quote
James Salter
The dreams are the skeleton of all reality. View quote
James Salter
The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four -the years turn dry as leaves. View quote
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. View quote
James Salter
The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design. View quote
James Salter
Happiness is often at its most intense when it is based on inequality. View quote
James Salter
He seems very mournful, but there is all the winter still to be survived. He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons. Finally it will become single nights. (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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
James Salter
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. View quote
James Salter
One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish. View quote
James Salter
As I look back, I see that life is like a game of solitaire and every once in a while there is a move. View quote
James Salter
France is herself Only in the winter, her naked self, without manners. In the fine weather, all the world can love her. View quote
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. View quote
James Salter
I have never been able to write the story. I reach a certain point and cannot go on. The death of kings can be recited, but not of one's child. View quote
James Salter
Life passes into pages if it passes into anything. (James Salter)
In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural. View quote
James Salter
My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don't. View quote
James Salter
The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another. View quote
James Salter
You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you know and what you experience. And this is undeniable. View quote
James Salter