James Salter Quotes

I feel I've got 10 books in me.

I will try to write books until I drop dead.

You have your brains, but it's energy and desire that make you write a book.

I don't really love writing. I don't love the feeling of starting a new file. But I love the feeling of overcoming and accomplishing.

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.

When I'm in the midst of finishing a book, I can be working around the clock.

I was writing blogs before work, then I was writing at work, and then I started writing books on the weekend because you just have that sort of energy in your 20s; it's wonderful.

My whole life, I've wanted to be a novelist.

I wrote a novel, so now they can call me a novelist. I tell stories; that's it.

I always loved to read, and I wanted to be part of the project of literature. My physical longevity is due to luck, and my literary longevity is due to my physical longevity.

I love writing and I just sit at my keyboard and write.

I'm constantly writing.

'Some day,' I said, 'I will be an author.'

I want to do something splendid… Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead… I think I shall write books.

Maybe it goes without saying that if you want to become a famous writer before you’re dead, you’ll have to write something. But the folks in my classes with the biggest ideas and the best publicity shots ready to grace the back covers of their best-selling novels are also usually the ones who aren’t holding any paper.

I am always writing. It is not always good, but if I am writing, I am usually happy.

My life revolves around my writing, my wife and my son.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. To be a writer - this may seem trite, I realize - you have to actually write.

Occasionally it does hit me, the words on a page. And I still love doing that, as I have for the last 60 years.

Instead of taking a year off, I started 'Dreamers of the Day' exactly 36 hours after I sent the manuscript for 'A Thread of Grace' to the publisher!

A journalist also needs to be disciplined, and so do I. I am, essentially, lazy. Without discipline I'd be just a mass of gummy bears on the sofa instead of on book tour with my eighth novel.

I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write.

I hope to be with you as a writer for a very long time, and I hope that you will enjoy reading my work, because readers are the highest form of life on this planet.