Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Irwin Shaw

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American novelist Irwin Shaw.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Irwin Shaw was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: The Young Lions (1948), about the fate of three soldiers during World War II, which was made into a film of the same name starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), about the fate of two brothers and a sister in the post-World War II decades, which in 1976 was made into a popular miniseries starring Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, and Susan Blakely.

American - Novelist | February 27, 1913 - May 16, 1984

Source: Wikipedia

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

Irwin Shaw

It's those damn critics again.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

A writer has to live with a sense of honor.

Irwin Shaw

My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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.

Irwin Shaw

The writer works in a lonely way.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

When I started out in the early 1930s, there were a great many magazines that published short stories. Unfortunately, the short-story market has dwindled to almost nothing.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

Irwin Shaw

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.

Irwin Shaw

Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

Irwin Shaw

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

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.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever

Irwin Shaw

Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. Why do kids play football? They can get hurt on any play, can't they? Yet they can't wait until Saturday comes around so they can play on the high school team, or the college team, and get smashed around. Writing is like that. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it!

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written

Irwin Shaw

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.

Irwin Shaw

If football players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

Irwin Shaw