| Irwin Shaw QUOTES / QUOTATIONS |
A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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A writer has to live with a sense of honor.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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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.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Everybody knows somebody who is writing for television or for the movies. There are I so many more writers.
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I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I can see through trickery and cheating a lot better than I did. I've been exposed to quite a bit of it.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I know writers who lean on their editors very heavily. They want constant reassurance. They are doubtful about their own directions.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I was required to send at my own expense two books to some bureaucratic organization of the Hungarian government. You can imagine how well writers are doing in Budapest.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I've become more gentle in my irony. I'm liable to do more with failure and death. My attitude toward women is much less romantic than it was.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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If, when I got out of college, I had abandoned my family to starvation, I'd have been a much worse writer.
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In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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It's those damn critics again.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.
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People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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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.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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The New Yorker editors are the least athletic group of people I've ever seen, and they were against violence.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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The New Yorker has been very hospitable to me. I had great editors there.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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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.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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The serious writer who doesn't want to compromise at all finds it difficult.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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The writer works in a lonely way.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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There are a couple of critics I won't forget, from the so-called New York literary establishment, who have their own pets and standards.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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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.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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There are very few people like Pound around and very few people like T.S. Eliot. So I don't hope for that.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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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.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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When I write about young people, I want to see whether I'm getting it straight or not.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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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.
Quotation of Irwin Shaw
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