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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. Most Of The Details, Though, Have Long Since Been Transformed Or Rearranged To Bring Others Of Them Forward. Some, In Fact, Are Obviously Counterfeit; They Are No Less Important. One Alters The Past To Form The Future.

-James Salter

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Certain Things I Remember

James Salter

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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. Most Of The Details, Though, Have Long Since Been Transformed Or Rearranged To Bring Others Of Them Forward. Some, In Fact, Are Obviously Counterfeit; They Are No Less Important. One Alters The Past To Form The Future.

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We Dash The Black River, Its Flats Smooth As Stone. Not A Ship, Not A Dinghy, Not One Cry Of White. The Water Lies Broken, Cracked From The Wind. This Great Estuary Is Wide, Endless. The River Is Brackish, Blue With The Cold. It Passes Beneath Us Blurring. The Sea Birds Hang Above It, They Wheel, Disappear. We Flash The Wide River, A Dream Of The Past. The Deeps Fall Behind, The Bottom Is Paling The Surface, We Rush By The Shallows, Boats Beached For Winter, Desolate Piers. And On Wings Like The Gulls, Soar Up, Turn, Look Back.

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You’re So American. You Believe Everything Is Possible, Everything Will Come. I Know Differently.

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.

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.

To Write? Because All This Is Going To Vanish. The Only Thing Left Will Be The Prose And Poems, The Books, What Is Written Down. Man Was Very Fortunate To Have Invented The Book. Without It The Past Would Completely Vanish, And We Would Be Left With Nothing, We Would Be Naked On Earth.

You Are Perfectly Entitled To Invent Your Life And To Claim That It's True.

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Love Must Wait; It Must Break One’s Bones.

You Would Have To Be Very Optimistic To Think That Any Of Your Books Will Be Among The Books That Survive In The Very Long Run. I Think If A Writer Is Lucky Enough To Still Have A Few Books Around After He's Gone, A Few That Are Still Being Read, Then He's Accomplished Quite A Lot.

Lots Of Scripts Are Written And Not Made, Even Scripts That People Want To Make.

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.

I'm Tired Of My Life, My Clothes, The Things I Say. I'm Hacking Away At The Surface, As At Some Kind Of Gray Ice, Trying To Break Through To What Is Underneath Or I Am Dead. I Can Feel The Surface Trembling—it Seems Ready To Give But It Never Does. I Am Uninterested In Current Events. How Can I Justify This? How Can I Explain It? I Don't Want To Have The Same Vocabulary I've Always Had. I Want Something Richer, Broader, More Penetrating And Powerful.

I Like To Write About Certain Things That If They Are Not Written About Are Not Going To Exist.

What Is The Ultimate Impulse To Write? Because All This Is Going To Vanish.

I Don't Fear Death. I'm Not Obsessed With It The Way Everybody Else Seems To Be. It's Wrong To Say "everybody," But In Literature I See It All The Time - Preoccupation With It, Philosophical Preoccupation, In Fact. That's A Principle Element Of Literature And Philosophy, Often Cited As The Main Element, The Only Real Element. I Say Give It Up.

They Lay Silently. She Was Staring At Something Across The Room. She Was Making Him Feel Uncomfortable. 'it Wouldn't Work. It's The Attraction Of Opposites,' He Said. We're Not Opposites.' I Don't Mean Just You And Me. 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.

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It's Just That It's Hard To Believe In Greatness.

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A Light Snow, A Snow So Faint And Small-bodied That It Seems Nothing More Than A Manifestation Of The Cold.

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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. Most Of The Details, Though, Have Long Since Been Transformed Or Rearranged To Bring Others Of Them Forward. Some, In Fact, Are Obviously Counterfeit; They Are No Less Important. One Alters The Past To Form The Future.

I Like Aristocracy. I Like The Beauty Of Aristocracy. I Like The Hierarchical Feeling.

Sometimes I Write With A Particular Person In Mind. I Think It's Fair To Say That I Write For A Perceptive Reader. You Have To Get It. If You Don't Get It The First Time You May Not Understand. If You Like Repetition, Analysis, Explanation, You Probably Won't Like My Books.

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The Normal Economic System Works Itself.

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Dresscodes Are For Styleless People.

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We Were Moderate, We Will Never Know What It Is To Spill Out Our Lives.

In 1957, I Decided: Write Or Perish.

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I Don't Fear Death. I'm Not Obsessed With It The Way Everybody Else Seems To Be.

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The Summer Has Ended. The Garden Withers. The Mornings Become Chill. I Am Thirty, I Am Thirty-four -the Years Turn Dry As Leaves.

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.

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In General, American Life Is More Easy-going. And Civic Pride, National Pride In A Cultural Sense, Is Great In America. I Think What They Esteem In America Is Character And Energy, And Being Different And Superior To Other Peoples. Of Course, Every Nation Feels Itself To Be Superior, But In America It's A Jaunty Feeling, And In Some Cases A Rather Ominous One Among The Super-patriots.

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