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
philosophy real philosophical
I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be. It's wrong to say "everybody," but in literature I see it all the time - preoccupation with it, philosophical preoccupation, in fact. That's a principle element of literature and philosophy, often cited as the main element, the only real element. I say give it up.
dream reality skeletons
The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.
realization lasts
ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.
children real drunk
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 to a child, for whom one spent everything, whose life was protected and nourished by one's own, to have that child beside one, at peace, was the real, the deepest, the only joy.
real luxury teeth
They are travelling cheaply, with that touch of indolence and occasional luxury that comes only from having real resources. They live in Levis and sunlight. Sometimes they brush their teeth in streams.
real past patterns
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.
dream real writing
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.
business call entire fountain letters phone remember wrote
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.
lies life obviously rather room telling writers
I sometimes say that I don't make anything up - obviously that's not true. But I am uninterested in writers who say that everything comes out of the imagination. I would rather be in a room with someone who is telling the story of his life, which may be exaggerated and even have lies in it, but I want to hear the true story, essentially.
elevated encouraged everywhere good produces producing programs
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.
life writers
The writers of books are companions in one's life and, as such, are often more interesting than other companions.
feminine response terms
I've made an effort to nurture the feminine in myself. I don't mean overtly, but in terms of response to things.
felt women
I've always said that I felt women are more heroic.
I write in longhand. I am accustomed to that proximity, that feel of writing. Then I sit down and type.