James Salter Quotes

He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two.

Every glance made him need another.

Of them all, it was the true love. Of them all, it was the best. That other sumptuous love which made one drunk, which one longed for, envied, believed in, that was not life. It was what life was seek...

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

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.

There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection.

there comes a time in life, when you realize that everything is a dream; only those things which are written down have any possibility of being real.

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.

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.

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

He wants his children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond t...

Alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life--it was not worth much--not like a life that, though ended, h...

But of course, in one sense, Dean never died - his existence is superior to such accidents. One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devo...

Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds on...

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...

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,...

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.

Whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist.

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...

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