IRWIN SHAW

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.

My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various.

You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer.

It's those damn critics again.

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.

Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.

I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.

In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75.

I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.

Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own.

There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.

Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.