"A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold." ~James Salter
"Age doesn't arrive slowly, it comes in a rush. One day nothing has changed, a week later, everything has. A week may be too long a time, it can happen overnight. You are the same and still the same and suddenly one morning two distinct lines, ineradicable, have appeared at the corners of your mouth." ~James Salter
"But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still, anything can be endured if all humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun." ~James Salter
"Children are our crop, our fields, our earth. They are birds let loose into darkness. They are errors renewed. Still, they are the only source from which may be drawn a life more successful, more knowing than our own. Somehow they will do one thing, take one step further, they will see the summit. We believe in it, the radiance that streams from the future, from days we will not see. Children must live, must triumph. Children must die; that is an idea we cannot accept." ~James Salter
"I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you must remember that." ~James Salter
"I always knew writing a novel was a great thing." ~James Salter
"I like men who have known the best and the worst, whose life has been anything but a smooth trip. Storms have battered them, they have lain, sometimes for months on end, becalmed. There is a residue even if they fail. It has not been all tinkling; there have been grand chords." ~James Salter
"I write down portions, maybe fragments, and perhaps an imperfect view of what Im hoping to write. Out of that, I keep trying to find exactly what I want." ~James Salter
"If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time." ~James Salter
"It is always an accident that saves us. It is someone we have never seen.” ~James Salter "It seems to me that literature is giving way a little bit to the immediacy of other diversions, other forms of entertainment. What will it be in fifty years? I don't know. Will there be printed books? Probably, but I'm not sure. There's always going to be literature, though. I believe that. I think literature has a way of getting deep into people and being essential. Literature has its own powers." ~James Salter
"It was love, the furnace into which everything was dropped.” ~James Salter
"ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.” ~James Salter "One should not believe too easily in a life which can easily vanish.” ~James Salter
"One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.” ~James Salter
"The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design." ~James Salter
"There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection." ~James Salter
"You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you know and what you experience. And this is undeniable." ~James Salter
"Your parents are the parents you know best. Your brother and sister, if you have them, are the brother and sister you know best. They may not be the ones you like the best. They may not be the most interesting, but they are the closest and probably the clearest to you." ~James Salter
BIO
James Salter
Novelist
James Arnold Horowitz, better known as James Salter, his pen name and later-adopted legal name, was an American novelist and short-story writer. Originally a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he resigned from the military in 1957 following the successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters.
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