James Salter Quotes

With each book you write you have to learn how to write that book - so every time, you have to start all over again.

Every story I write is different. Some are hard. Some aren't. 'Chronicle' was tremendously easy. I have a hard time comparing my process on different things, but I will say this: The more you write, the better you get at it. That's one of the few things that's markedly true.

Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

The most important advice I can offer is that writing is a craft that you can learn by practicing. If you keep writing, you will improve.

I've discovered as an author that the process of writing a novel becomes harder over time, not easier. I used to think the reverse must be true, that it would be like any task, and the more I practiced, the more adept I'd become.

You should constantly write because your writing is always evolving and progressing. It's really important to start writing young.

Talent is required, but much of writing is a matter of craft, which develops with time, attention, patience and practice, like playing an instrument or learning to dance.

I feel more comfortable each time I sit down to write, but I'm determined to get better and better.

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.

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

I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were not good poems.

I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice.

I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer.

I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard.

It took me six novels before I felt confident of my voice as a writer.

Writing is one of the few activities where quantity will inevitably make quality. The more you write, the better you're going to get at it.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don't think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.

I want to be a better writer. I want to learn and grow, to know how to tell stories in a different and more challenging way. I've learned it doesn't get easier each time. It actually gets harder.

I was a terrible writer at first.

Writing is like a sport - you only get better if you practice

I was never born to write. I was taught to write. And I am still being taught to write.

You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

All experience helps when you write.