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
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.
people
Dresscodes are for styleless people.
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.
writing opportunity joy
The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another.
book illumination rivers
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?
past people sometimes
Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.
falling-in-love men opposites
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
powerful tired ice
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.
writing impulse ultimate
What is the ultimate impulse to write? Because all this is going to vanish.
falling-in-love mean men
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.
past long important
Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit. Most of the details, though, have long since been transformed or rearranged to bring others of them forward. Some, in fact, are obviously counterfeit; they are no less important. One alters the past to form the future.
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.
waiting bones break
Love must wait; it must break one’s bones.
book writing past
To write? Because all this is going to vanish. The only thing left will be the prose and poems, the books, what is written down. 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.