206 Quotes by James Salter

She constantly piles up her hair with her hands and then lets it fall. She laughs, but there is no sound. It’s all in silence – she is made out of yesterdays.

I’d say the biggest relationship is the repetition of certain themes. I don’t want to say “topics,” but certain points of interest.

A film writer is very much like a party girl. While you’re good-looking and still unlined, the possibilities seem endless. But your appeal doesn’t last long and you’re quickly discarded.

It was all leaving her in slow, imperceptible movements, like the tide when one’s back is turned: everyone, everything she had known. So all of grief and happiness, far from being buried with one, vanished beforehand except for scattered pieces. She lived among forgotten episodes, unknown faces bereft of names, closed off from the very world she had created; that was how it came to be. But I must show nothing of that, she thought. Her children – she must not reveal it to them.

It’s ahead of us. All I can tell you is, not even courage will help.” “Are you reading Alma Mahler again?” “No.” Her voice was even and knowing. The underground river. The ceiling lowers, grows wet, the water rushes into darkness. The air becomes damp and icy, the passage narrows. Light is lost here, sound; the current begins to flow beneath great, impassable slabs.

One must have heroes, which is to say, one must create them. And they become real through our envy, our devotion. It is we who give them their majesty, their power, which we ourselves could never possess. And in turn, they give some back. They do not last forever. They fade. They vanish. They are surpassed, forgotten – one hears of them no more.

Do you know what it is to be really intimate, to feel safe with someone who will never betray you, will never force you to act unlike yourself? That was what we had.

He no longer lives in years; he is down to seasons. Finally it will become single nights, each one perilous as a lunar journey. He.

The most devout moments of my life have been spent in bed at night listening to those bells. They flood over me, drawing me out of myself. I know where I am suddenly; part of this town and happy. I lean out of the window and am washed by the cool air, air it seems no one has yet breathed.