Irwin Shaw Quotes
"I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Body)
"If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Time, Writing)
"I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written."
- Irwin Shaw
"I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it."
- 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
(Related: Ideas)
"I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: First)
"I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Formula, Style, Writers)
"I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Americans, Writer)
"I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young."
- Irwin Shaw
"I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself."
- Irwin Shaw
"Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Purpose)
"Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Public, Writer)
"Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Life, Work, states, United, Writers)
"At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Being, Writers)
"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
(Related: Talent, Ability, Punishment, World, Writer)
"All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Forget, Writers)
"A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Being, Honor, Sense, Writer)
"A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Talking, Writing)
"In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody."
- 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
(Related: Time, Wife, Chance, Fortune, Giving, Living, Style)
"A writer has to live with a sense of honor."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Honor, Sense, Writer)
"People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: People, Light)
"The writer works in a lonely way."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Lonely, Writer)
"You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Popularity, Writer)
"Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Play, Reason, Writing)
"Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Life, Living, Theater, Writing)
"Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Fiction, Writers)
"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
(Related: Books, Memories)
"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
(Related: Family, Talent, Idea, Humanity, May, Nation, Romantic, Writer)
"The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out."
- Irwin Shaw
"The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Care, Writers)
"Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Football, Hurt, Writing)
"Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Posterity, Surprises)
"In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: America, Artist, Example, Feeling)
"No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Writer)
"My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me."
- Irwin Shaw
"My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Favorite, Writer)
"My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Books)
"Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Man, Writers)
"It's those damn critics again."
- Irwin Shaw
"Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: American, English)
"In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Talk, Theater, Writer)
"In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75."
- Irwin Shaw
(Related: Europe, Writer)
"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
(Related: Work, People, Routine, Want, Writers, Writing)
"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
(Related: Nothing)