Quotes By Irwin Shaw
My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.
Irwin Shaw
I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.
Irwin Shaw
A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.
Irwin Shaw
Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.
Irwin Shaw
Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.
Irwin Shaw
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.
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.
Irwin Shaw
If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.
Irwin Shaw
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.
Irwin Shaw
Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.
Irwin Shaw
The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.
Irwin Shaw
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.
Irwin Shaw
In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.
Irwin Shaw
There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough.
Irwin Shaw
No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.
Irwin Shaw
I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.
Irwin Shaw
I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various.
Irwin Shaw