James Salter Quotes

Since I quit banking, all my major life decisions, when they could, have revolved around writing.

I've wanted to write ever since I've gotten into comics. I wrote little things for myself when I was doing mini-comics and things, before becoming a professional. But I just figure at some point or another, I've got to make the leap. I just have to do it.

I thought if I lost the band, I was dead. If I didn't stick with the Who, I would be a sheet metal worker for the rest of my life.

Despite having written five books, I worry that I have not written the right kinds of books, or that perhaps I have dedicated too much of my life to writing, and have therefore neglected other aspects of my being.

Even through my college years, I was trying out plays and shows, but I never really thought it made much sense to try to be an actor. I thought it was foolish, really.

As a dancer running around the world, I always questioned whether that's what I wanted to do.

Maybe I need to make a change, or maybe it's living here in New York or using social media or working in media and entertainment, but I feel like I'm constantly trying to maintain this sense of, 'Why do I do what I do?'

When I started acting, everyone told me to get a backup in case it didn't work out; if there was something else I could have done, I would have done it. Acting should never be your chosen path if you can help it.

I was always a wannabe 'singer-songwriter' but nothing was happening. I was trying for albums. I was too afraid to quit my job for nothing. But my friends kept on encouraging me. I kept on writing songs. My first hit was probably my 150th song.

Everyone who does comedy at my level thinks the same thing: 'What am I doing with my life?'

I've always liked to write, but I never thought I could make a career out of it.

I was in New York and was pursuing musical theater, and it didn't feel right. I felt I was forcing myself to do things and be things that I wasn't, all the time. I wasn't listening to what I wanted to do. I was listening to what I thought I should do.

Part of me, even when I was trying to get acting jobs, I was still kind of thinking, 'Oh I should do something else with my life.'

I couldn't wait to get out of school, but once I did, I didn't actually know what I wanted to do with myself. I don't really know how it happened, but I just started writing music and realized that's what I wanted to do.

If I truly had the courage of my convictions, I would be a full-blown comic novelist.

I definitely thought the first book was going to be a one-off. I never thought I'd even write a book, not ever having aspired to be a writer. It's something that never occurred to me - a bit like it never occurred to me to play guitar when I was young. I just thought it was out of my league.

I was having a dilemma whether I wanted to return to acting at all because I was coming from this sort of agency-less childhood career, and I'd never made the choice to go into acting.

I went through a phase after we won the World Cup of 'what am I going to do with my life.'

Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms - what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.

I feel lucky. I do love it, mostly. At college I had it in my heart that I wanted to be a writer but I didn't want to tell anyone about it. Then I graduated and became a bartender in Philadelphia, writing during the day. I was the worst bartender in the world.

When you're young, your perception of what it means to be a writer is often less about the writing and more about what seems to be the accompanying life: speeches and travel and hanging out with other writers. You think that when you get published, your life will clarify itself to you somehow. But when you don't get published until you're middle-aged you know who you are already, and your life expands to make room for your writing, rather than orbiting around it. You realize that there's no one way to be a writer, and that the job is less of an identity and more of a vocation.

I didn't know what I wanted to Be...A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards...I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win...What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too.

I really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly - for about six hours - considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write.

I've always defined myself as a writer, I've never decided what it was I was gonna write. [...] I always fancied myself one, but I'm not. I'm so far from a writer.

Brit Marling smartest girl I've ever met. Hands down. Brilliant. Her story? She had a graduate degree from a top tier school and turned down a job with some big company. She went to LA, said she was going to be an actress. She wasn't getting auditions, so she started writing her own films.