"Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it."
"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."
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Source: Irwin Shaw (2013). “Short Stories: Five Decades”, p.68, Open Road Media
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