206 Quotes by James Salter

Then it was intoxicating. The smooth takeoff, and the free feeling of having the world drop away. Soon after leaving the ground, they were crossing patches of stratus that lay in the valleys as heavy and white as glaciers. North for the first time. It was still an adventure, as exciting as love, as frightening.

I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible.

Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they’re ready to leave.

He lived in it helplessly as we live in our bodies when we are older.

Greatness is something which can be regarded in a number of ways,” he said. “It is, of course, the apotheosis, man raised to his highest powers, but it also can be, in a way, like insanity, a certain kind of imbalance, a flaw, in most cases a beneficial flaw, an anomaly, an accident.” “Well, many great men are eccentric,” Viri said, “even narrow.” “Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.

He unrolls names like a splendid carpet.

I’m tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I’m hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling – it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don’t want to have the same vocabulary I’ve always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful.

It was among the knowledgeable others that one hoped to be talked about and admired. It was not impossible – the world of squadrons is small. The years would bow to you; you would be remembered, your name like a thoroughbred’s, a horse that ran and won.

You are perfectly entitled to invent your life and to claim that it’s true.