Quotes from Irwin Shaw

Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing.

The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out.

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.

I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.

The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.

In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75.

Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.

Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer.

It's those damn critics again.

An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.

Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life

I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.

Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.

People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly.

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written.

A writer has to live with a sense of honor.

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.

There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.