Quotes by James Salter

About James Salter:

James Arnold Horowitz was an American novelist and short-story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he resigned from the military in 1957 following the successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Art, in a sense, is life brought to a standstill, rescued from time. The secret of making it is simple: discard everything that is good enough.

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, ineradi...

James Salter

Prayers likewise your positive thoughts can be based on gratitude and love.

James Salter

There is no virtue in poverty and illness. we all have been created to be healthy and wealthy with more than enough for everyone.

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

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....

James Salter

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards. Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain lan...

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,h...

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...

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 m...

James Salter

Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one longed for, envied, believed in, that was not life. It was what life was seeking; it was a suspension of life. But to be close ...

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

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 exci...

James Salter

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

James Salter

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

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 t...

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.

James Salter

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

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

Author Bio

  • NameJames Salter
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist and short-story writer
  • BornJune 10, 1925
  • DiedJune 19, 2015
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Author; Novelist; Aviator