A Quote by James Salter

I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. — © James Salter
I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible.
I'm a 'frotteur,' someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader's hair frizzy. There's a question of pacing.
Sometimes I feel really bad for the audience. I don't know how to make them happy. And you just feel drained cause you're trying everything possible to turn things around. And sometimes it is possible to turn things around on stage, and I've done it before, but sometimes it's impossible.
It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else.
I wonder if it's ever really possible to know the truth about someone else, or if the best we can do is just stumble into each other, heads down, hoping to avoid collision. I...wonder how many people are clutching secrets like little fists, little rocks sitting in the pits of their stomachs. All of them, maybe.
But what I really want is to just swim around in a warm baby pool of these friends, jump in their dry leaf pile-to rub them all over myself, without words and clothes.
The dictionary is a closed system in which someone interested in the meaning of a word can go around and around and end up exactly where he started, simply because words are defined in terms of other words, and these, in turn, are defined in terms of still other words.
Trump has his own audience, which is in many cases as big as or bigger than the media covering him. He doesn't need the media. He enjoys them being around. He likes toying with them. He likes being provocative around them. To him, the media is a plaything. To the Republican and Democrat establishments, the media holds coequal position in the entire power structure of the ruling class.
Bend words. Stretch them, squash them, mash them up, fold them. Turn them over or swing them upside down. Make up new words. Leave a place for the strange and downright impossible ones. Use ancient words. Hold on to the gangly, silly, slippy, truthful, dangerous, out-of-fashion ones.
Ever wonder how much patience you should have with someone, you know, before you lose your temper? Infinite. But careful now. That doesn't mean you have to wait for them, stay with them, or hang around them. Lord no, it just means that for as long as you choose to keep them in your life, understanding them, not changing them, is everything.
For we let our young men and women go out unarmed in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.
Reading was a way to make friends or enemies, a way to discover how all these different people exist in the world and to rub shoulders with them. The ability to feel as if you have met someone, as if that person exists in flesh and blood and that you relate to them somehow, makes you feel a lot less lonely. And it also makes you feel very brave.
The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have not discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.
Well, everything with being vegan and vegetarian is a really big commitment. You have to do what you feel is best and what you believe in and what your body is telling you that it needs. I really think everyone should do what's best for them, and what's best for me may not be best for someone else.
Understand is not the word; you are right, you can never really 'understand' about someone, anyone, even yourself. It is best to believe in them as human; feel that they are alive like you and need warmth, concern.
When someone is bullying you, don't let it get to you. I remember my friends in school, someone said something mean to them, and they really let it get to them. And it really affected them. But I would just say try to ignore it as much as possible and just be yourself.
My books have three W's on them, which are "words," "wisdom," and "wonder." Words inevitably lead to wisdom, and wisdom inevitably leads to wonder and awe at this phenomenal world around us.
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