Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Irwin Shaw - Page 2

I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.

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

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