Quotes By Irwin Shaw

People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly.

Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House.

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.

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.

No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.

It's those damn critics again.

I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various.

In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out.

Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.

At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.

You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer.

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.

I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.

In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.

Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.

Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing.

I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans.

Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.

I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written.

Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.

A writer has to live with a sense of honor.

A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.

My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me.