"My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me"
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Quote collection
Irwin Shaw quotes (page 2 of 3)
49 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid."
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"If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship."
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"I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young"
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"I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it."
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"In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices"
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"A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much."
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"Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody."
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"My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever"
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"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."
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"You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer"
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"My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have"
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"Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American."
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"In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75"
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"In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that."
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"Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House"
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"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."
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"Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form"
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"In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody"
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"The writer works in a lonely way."
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