James Salter
James Salter
James Arnold Horowitz, better known as James Salter, his pen name and later-adopted legal name, 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 June 1925
CountryUnited States of America
chance languages
Like books you will never have the chance to read, there are languages you do not know, and you're not going to get a chance to learn, so you'll never really know what was written, only the approximation.
america among cases feels itself ominous
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.
coming curtain faces hearing life looking meeting open question seeing situation
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.
fortunate invented left man naked
Man was very fortunate to have invented the book. Without it, the past would completely vanish, and we would be left with nothing, we would be naked on earth.
death
The death of kings can be recited, but not of one's child.
above climbing crack east face feet high lightning rock roll slept spent thunder tom wall
I spent the night on a sliver of rock high up on the east face of Long's Peak, climbing with Tom Frost, and slept at the icy feet of the Dru, listening to the lightning crack above me and the thunder roll down. I only did it to write about it. I would never go up on the Grotto Wall for fun.
aesthetic gives ideal suppose tremendous trying
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.
hard initially written
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. That's what I think is hard - the discouragement that comes from seeing what you have done.
time
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.
beauty
There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection.
power returned written
Written pages are something that can be returned to, reclaimed, and when they are marvelous, never lose their power.
achieves instinct whether
The deepest instinct is to want to do something enduring, something worthwhile, and to be engaged by that, whether one achieves it or not.
above certain people word
Certain people can keep a word tune, so to speak, and certain people cannot. And, above all, certain people can tell a story, and other people can't. They don't hear that point where something else has to come.
devoted
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.