"Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it."
"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."
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Source: Herbert Kline, Irwin Shaw (1985). “New theatre and film, 1934 to 1937: an anthology”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
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More quotes by 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."
"Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy."
"I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober."
"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!"
"The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out."