Top 100 James Salter Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The classic decision is always the same, whether to retreat or go on. There comes a time when it is easier to continue upward, when the summit, in fact, is the only way out. At such a moment one must still have strength.”

— James Salter

52. “One feels pan of a vast servitude, anonymous and unending, all of it vanishing unexpectedly with the passing image of Madame Picquet behind the glass of her office, that faintly vulgar, thrilling profile. As I think of it, there’s an ache in my chest. I cannot control these dreams in which she seems to lie in my future like a whole season of extravagant meals if only I knew how to arrange it.”

— James Salter

53. “A light snow, a snow so faint and small-bodied that it seems nothing more than a manifestation of the cold.”

— James Salter

54. “It was all leaving her in slow, imperceptible movements, like the tide when one’s back is turned: everyone, everything she had known. So all of grief and happiness, far from being buried with one, vanished beforehand except for scattered pieces. She lived among forgotten episodes, unknown faces bereft of names, closed off from the very world she had created; that was how it came to be. But I must show nothing of that, she thought. Her children – she must not reveal it to them.”

— James Salter

55. “Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit.”

— James Salter

56. “The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another.”

— James Salter

57. “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

58. “We were moderate, we will never know what it is to spill out our lives...”

— James Salter

59. “When Vivian began to recover they brought her a fluted glass vase with an arrangement of lilies and yellow roses from the flower shop on Eighteenth Street owned by an elegant man Arthur had once been involved with, Christos, who was friends with both of them. He, too, loved the theater and everything about it. Later he opened a restaurant.”

— James Salter

60. “In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.”

— James Salter

61. “If you can overcome the occasional angst, you may have the chance to see some interesting things, perhaps the same things the tour buses bring people to see, but purified by solitude, if you will. In any case, do not stay in the hotel room. That is the only place you are vulnerable.”

— James Salter

62. “Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.”

— James Salter

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

— James Salter

64. “He unrolls names like a splendid carpet.”

— James Salter

65. “Babel werd nooit moe zijn verhalen te herschrijven. Hij zei dat er in een volzin ergens een soort hefboompje zat waarop je de hand kon leggen om er een heel kleine, maar precies goede draai mee te geven, niet te veel, niet te weinig, waarna alles op zijn plaats viel.”

— James Salter

66. “Greatness is something which can be regarded in a number of ways,” he said. “It is, of course, the apotheosis, man raised to his highest powers, but it also can be, in a way, like insanity, a certain kind of imbalance, a flaw, in most cases a beneficial flaw, an anomaly, an accident.” “Well, many great men are eccentric,” Viri said, “even narrow.” “Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.”

— James Salter

67. “Suddenly I am crushed by the simplicity of it all: he is leaving.”

— James Salter

68. “She constantly piles up her hair with her hands and then lets it fall. She laughs, but there is no sound. It’s all in silence – she is made out of yesterdays.”

— James Salter

69. “It’s ahead of us. All I can tell you is, not even courage will help.” “Are you reading Alma Mahler again?” “No.” Her voice was even and knowing. The underground river. The ceiling lowers, grows wet, the water rushes into darkness. The air becomes damp and icy, the passage narrows. Light is lost here, sound; the current begins to flow beneath great, impassable slabs.”

— James Salter

70. “Leven is het weer. Leven is maaltijden. Lunch op een blauw-geruit kleed waar zout op is gemorst. De geur van tabak. Brie, gele appels, messen met houten handvaten.”

— James Salter

71. “Lots of scripts are written and not made, even scripts that people want to make.”

— James Salter

72. “He had never been particularly young, or to put it another way, he had been young for a long time and now was at his true age, old enough for civilized comfrots and not too old for the primal ones.”

— James Salter

73. “There are men who seem to have seized the trunk of life, and he was one of them. It might not be for everyone, the great, scarring thing you could not get your arms around, but it was there for him.”

— James Salter

74. “On the Internet, everyone is writing. There is a great flowering of writing.”

— James Salter

75. “Hope but not enthusiasm is the proper state for the writer.”

— James Salter

76. “My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don’t.”

— James Salter

77. “Now they are lovers. The first, wild courses are ended. They have founded their domain. A satanic happiness follows.”

— James Salter

78. “I’d say the biggest relationship is the repetition of certain themes. I don’t want to say “topics,” but certain points of interest.”

— James Salter

79. “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

80. “I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you must remember that.”

— James Salter

81. “His devotion is complete; he is beginning to sense the confusion that arises from the first fears of what life would be like without her. He knows there can be such a thing, but like the answer to a difficult problem, he cannot imagine it.”

— James Salter

82. “It’s tremendous: this world, this life. Take it while you have it.”

— James Salter

83. “We think of Rome as an empire in a way that we do not use for other nations. The others are pretenders. Rome stands alone. Throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Near East its wreckage still draws the traveler and speaks a message that is haunting: this was imperial, this was lasting, this is gone.”

— James Salter

84. “But that isn’t my life. I have said many times I don’t want to be considered one who once flew fighters. That’s not who I am. I devoted the subsequent 50 years – more – to writing.”

— James Salter

85. “Dresscodes are for styleless people.”

— James Salter

86. “His world was small, an illiterate county seat, a backward state, though from it he fashioned something greater, far greater perhaps than he ever knew. A writer cannot really grasp what he has written. It is not like a building or a sculpture; it cannot be seen whole. It is only a kind of smoke seized and printed on a page.”

— James Salter

87. “She comes to life with a soft exhausted sound, like someone saved from drowning.”

— James Salter

88. “When she said goodbye it was like a play ending. It was like the theater and coming out again to the streets.”

— James Salter

89. “She formed her life day by day, taking as its materials the emptiness and panic as well as the rushes, like fever, of contentment. I am beyond fear of solitude, she thought, I am past it. The idea thrilled her. I am beyond it and I will not sink. This submission, this triumph made her stronger. It was as if finally, after having passed through inferior stages, her life had found a form worthy of it.”

— James Salter

90. “He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older.”

— James Salter

91. “If you can think of life, for a moment, as a large house with a nursery, living and dining rooms, bedrooms, study, and so forth, all unfamiliar and bright, the chapters which follow are, in a way, like looking through the windows of this house. Certain occupants will be glimpsed only briefly. Visitors come and go. At some windows you may wish to stay longer, but alas. As with any house, all within cannot be seen.”

— James Salter

92. “A writer cannot really grasp what he has written. It is not like a building or a sculpture; it cannot be seen whole. It is only a kind of smoke seized and printed on a page.”

— James Salter

93. “I am afraid of him, of all men who are successful in love.”

— James Salter

94. “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.”

— James Salter

95. “Dean is still asleep. His clothes are strewn about. The shutters are closed. He never dreams. He’s like a dead musician, like a spent runner. He hasn’t the strength to dream, or rather, his dreams take place while he is awake and they are marvelous for at least one quality: he has the power to prolong them.”

— James Salter

96. “He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons. Finally it will become single nights, each one perilous as a lunar journey. He.”

— James Salter

97. “I don’t hold myself dictated to by what everyone is saying, by the tabloids or popular opinion. I don’t like bourgeois values. I say you find your own way to live.”

— James Salter

98. “You’re so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.”

— James Salter

99. “It was among the knowledgeable others that one hoped to be talked about and admired. It was not impossible – the world of squadrons is small. The years would bow to you; you would be remembered, your name like a thoroughbred’s, a horse that ran and won.”

— James Salter

100. “When he undressed at night he was like a diplomat or a judge. A white body, gentle and powerless, emerged from his clothes, his position in the world lay tumbled on the floor, fallen from his ankles...”

— James Salter