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James Salter Quotes

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.

After a brief career in film writing and film directing, in 1979 Salter published the novel Solo Faces. He won numerous literary awards for his works, including belated recognition of works originally criticized at the time of their publication. His friend and fellow author, the Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford, went so far as to say, "It is an article of faith among readers of fiction that James Salter writes American sentences better than anybody writing today" in his Introduction to Light Years for Penguin Modern Classics. Michael Dirda of the Washington Post is reported to have said that with a single sentence, he could break one's heart. In an introduction to the final interview he gave before his death, Guernica described Salter as having "a good claim to being the greatest living American novelist."

✵ 10. June 1925 – 19. June 2015  •  Other names جيمس سالتر
James Salter photo

Works

A Sport and a Pastime
James Salter: 17 quotes0 likes

Famous James Salter Quotes

“He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.”

James Salter

Source: All That Is

“Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave”

James Salter

Source: Dusk and Other Stories

“As I look back, I see that life is like a game of solitaire and every once in a while there is a move.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

Source: A Sport and a Pastime

“Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.”

James Salter

Source: Burning the Days: Recollection

“He seems very mournful, but there is all the winter still to be survived. He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons. Finally it will become single nights.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

James Salter Quotes

“The dreams are the skeleton of all reality.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four -the years turn dry as leaves.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“France is herself Only in the winter, her naked self, without manners. In the fine weather, all the world can love her.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“…she is simply the living portion of the meal.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“Solitude. One knows instinctively it has benefits that must be more deeply satisfying than those of other conditions, but still it is difficult.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“He nestles himself flat in the meeting of her buttocks. An excruciating douche.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“I have never been able to write the story. I reach a certain point and cannot go on. The death of kings can be recited, but not of one’s child.”

James Salter

Burning the Days (1997 memoir)

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

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“As his prick goes into her, he discovers the world. He knows the source of numbers, the path of the stars.”

James Salter book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

“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 book A Sport and a Pastime

A Sport and a Pastime (1967)

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