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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.

-James Salter

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I'm Tired Of My

James Salter

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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.

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Then It Was Intoxicating. The Smooth Takeoff, And The Free Feeling Of Having The World Drop Away. Soon After Leaving The Ground, They Were Crossing Patches Of Stratus That Lay In The Valleys As Heavy And White As Glaciers. North For The First Time. It Was Still An Adventure, As Exciting As Love, As Frightening.

I Always Knew Writing A Novel Was A Great Thing.

I'd Given Up Everything To Be A Writer, And If I Didn't Then Go On To Do That - To Write - Then I Didn't Know What Would Happen To Me.

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.

Dialogue's A Method Of Revelation, Of Course. A Few Words Of Dialogue Can Reveal Worlds About A Character.

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

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.

In The War Time Many Of The Publishing Houses Were Privately Owned, A Single Publisher Or A Publisher And A Few Associates Who Were Responsible For Everything. They Could Take Whatever Risks They Wanted, Could Essentially Publish What They Liked According To Their Taste. Publishers Today Are Working For Big Corporations. They Have Different Pressures. I Don't Think They Can Make Decisions Quite As Independently As They Used To Be Able To. They Have More Corporate And Financial Responsibilities Weighing On Them. They're Not Free To Go Broke Or Go To Jail.

One Of The Last Great Realizations Is That Life Will Not Be What You Dreamed.

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.

As I Look Back, I See That Life Is Like A Game Of Solitaire And Every Once In A While There Is A Move.

I'd Say The Biggest Relationship Is The Repetition Of Certain Themes. I Don't Want To Say "topics," But Certain Points Of Interest.

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.

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A Film Writer Is Very Much Like A Party Girl. While You're Good-looking And Still Unlined, The Possibilities Seem Endless. But Your Appeal Doesn't Last Long And You're Quickly Discarded.

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

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 Seeking; It Was A Suspension Of Life. But To Be Close To A Child, For Whom One Spent Everything, Whose Life Was Protected And Nourished By One's Own, To Have That Child Beside One, At Peace, Was The Real, The Deepest, The Only Joy.

Why Is It So Difficult To Assemble Those Things That Really Matter In Life And To Dwell Among Them Only? I Am Referring To Certain Landscapes, Persons, Beasts, Books, Rooms, Meteorological Conditions, Fruits.

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 Am Afraid Of Him, Of All Men Who Are Successful In Love.

Hope But Not Enthusiasm Is The Proper State For The Writer.

I Like Men Who Have Known The Best And The Worst, Whose Life Has Been Anything But A Smooth Trip. Storms Have Battered Them, They Have Lain, Sometimes For Months On End, Becalmed. There Is A Residue Even If They Fail. It Has Not Been All Tinkling; There Have Been Grand Chords.

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Amplitude Is A Powerful Quality In Fiction. It Results In Involvement, In Sympathy With The Characters. After A While, A Reader Can't Avoid Being Involved With A Book, Caring About It, Even If It's Not A Particularly Good Book. You're In It, And You're Committed To It.

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Happiness Is Often At Its Most Intense When It Is Based On Inequality.

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