James Salter Quotes

Dialogue's a method of revelation, of course. A few words of dialogue can reveal worlds about a character.

For those we are born to speak to we need prepare nothing, the lines are ready, everything is there.

I love to write about Nabokov and also to think about him. I love his attitude that he is incomparable, his lofty judgments and general scorn of other writers - not all of them, of course.

There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection.

Writers really don't retire, you know. They have to be taken out and shot.

I can't explain it. It's what turns you to powder, being ground between what you can't do and what you must do. You just turn to dust.