Quotes from Irwin Shaw

You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.

Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.

I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various.

Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own.

At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.

Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.

In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

Are these the people, created in greatness by the work of Jefferson and Franklin, he thought, are these the bitter farmers and hunters and craftsmen who came out of the wilderness, furious for liberty and justice, is this the new world of giants sung by Whitman?

The war's not over yet,' Jordache said. 'There's still a lot of idiots waiting that have to be killed.

He was an indifferent Christian but the afternoon called for gratitude and belief.

He doesn't drink." "Your boss," said Michael, "is a dangerous alien.

After Billy was born, they had moved to the top floor of an old

Hazen had already begun to mix her a martini. She watched approvingly. "Martinis make everything worthwhile, don't they?" she said, smiling at Strand.

He always felt trapped and restless when talking to lawyers or doing any business with them

Like most well-brought-up persons of twentieth-century America, the ritual of the private bathroom with the locked door was one of the pillars of existence.

Ci sono troppi libri che non ho letto, troppi posti che non ho visto, troppi ricordi che non ho conservato abbastanza a lungo

some shadowy haven back in

The human race was only bearable when the obscene juices of living were being constantly washed away.