James Salter Quotes

I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

I think people feel very comfortable reviewing the idea of me, as opposed to what I've actually written. Most of the time, when people write about one of my books, they're really just writing about what they think I may or may not represent, as sort of this abstract entity. Is that unfair? Not really. If I put myself in this position where I'm going to kind of weave elements of memoir into almost everything, well, I suppose that's going to happen.

Some years ago I wrote a book called The House on Eccles Street. To write this book I had to think my way into the existence of Marion Bloom...Marion Bloom was a figment of James Joyce's imagination. If I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being with whom I share the substrate of life.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself.

I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.

I was writing the kind of comic that would make me, at age 26 or 27, go down to a comic book store every month and spend my $2. That was my starting point. I wanted to write a comic that I would read. And that's still my agenda.

In my opinion, understanding who your target audience is, and what they want, and writing to them (and only them!) is the most important component of being successful as an author.

I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.

The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books, or write opinion pieces about what they think of Neil Young, or why they quit watching ER or whatever. And because of that, I think there's a lot of people who write about my books with the premise of, "Why this guy? Why not me?"

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don't want to read.

If you don’t want to cry about the state of the economy, why not laugh instead? This book is an ideal introduction to the subject for anybody who thinks they ought to understand what’s happening around them but is put off by the usual dense text and economics jargon.

The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation.

And then, 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' Those things just became so important to the character. You realize that the more you read it, if I read the book again today, I'd find 100 other things that I missed last time. It's a constantly changing book.

I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books . . . so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes.

Readers themselves, I think, contribute to a book. They add their own imaginations, and it is as though the writer only gave them something to work on, and they did the rest.

Maybe I'm perverse, but the question of "rooting" for a character, or setting out to write a character for whom other people will root, has never had anything to do with why I read or write fiction. As long as the writing and story remain alive, intense, invigorating, provoking, the characters can be as demonic or saintly as the author wants.

A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.

The point of page one is to make people turn to page two and if at the end of the book people think that the book was good value for money, you have achieved something, because if you haven't achieved those things you're not going to achieve the other thing.

I do think that the kind of writing that I do will always be around and printed in books, magazines, and now blogs.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

It's easier to write about those you hate — just as it's easier to criticize a bad play or a bad book.