Quotes from James Salter

He was thinking of the girl who would not be a maid and the other who waited for her American lover. He envied them. He would have liked to enter their fairy tale with them, their opera; for it seemed somehow that, despite the sadness, when the curtain fell they would find the youth in them to laugh and go elsewhere. p. 126

A veces uno es consciente de cuándo están sucediéndose los grandes momentos de su vida y a veces los descubre mirando al pasado. Tal vez suceda lo mismo con las personas.

I'm bored with happy couples. I don't believe in them. They're false. They're deceiving themselves.

The immense southern night had fallen. It glittered everywhere, in houses along the beach, supermarkets open late, the white marquees of theaters.

Si un libro es bueno, el escritor también ha de serlo.

I cannot think of it without sadness. I think of the day-long, intimate hours in her apartment with the same record playing over and over, phrases from it like some sort of oath I will know til the day I die.

There is no situation like the open road, and seeing things completely afresh. I'm used to traveling. It's not a question of meeting or seeing new faces particularly, or hearing new stories, but of looking at life in a different way. It's the curtain coming up on another act.

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

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.

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.

The writing is really important in books that affect me. I read for the writing. The story is usually of less interest to me. It's the words that break your heart.

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

Like books you will never have the chance to read, there are languages you do not know, and you're not going to get a chance to learn, so you'll never really know what was written, only the approximation.