Irwin Shaw Quotes

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

Irwin Shaw

#2. A writer has to live with a sense of honor.

Irwin Shaw

#3. If the players were armed with guns, there wouldn't be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds.

Irwin Shaw

#4. The writer works in a lonely way.

Irwin Shaw

#5. Hazen had already begun to mix her a martini. She watched approvingly. "Martinis make everything worthwhile, don't they?" she said, smiling at Strand.

Irwin Shaw

#6. I make it a point to look as healthy and attractive as I can at all times," Boylan had explained to Rudolph. "Even if I don't see anybody for weeks on end. It's a form of self-respect.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#8. A taste of luxury is part of the education of any intelligent human being. It teaches him how unnecessary it is.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#14. It is always necessary to remain barbarians, because it is the barbarians who always win.

Irwin Shaw

#15. My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#17. Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#20. The abuse of alcohol," Mr. Parrish said in a solemn, preacher-like voice, as he reached for his glass, "is the one thing that puts Man above the animal.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#22. 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

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

Irwin Shaw

#24. Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.

Irwin Shaw

#25. He was an indifferent Christian but the afternoon called for gratitude and belief.

Irwin Shaw

#26. I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.

Irwin Shaw

#27. My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.

Irwin Shaw

#28. 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

#29. Are these the people, created in greatness by the work of Jefferson and Franklin, he thought, are these the bitter farmers and hunters and craftsmen who came out of the wilderness, furious for liberty and justice, is this the new world of giants sung by Whitman?

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#33. 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

#34. I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.

Irwin Shaw

#35. If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

Irwin Shaw

#36. I look at everything. God gave me eyes and I look at women and men and subway excavations and moving pictures and the little flowers of the field. I casually inspect the universe.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#39. A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

Irwin Shaw

#40. 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

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#43. Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.

Irwin Shaw

#44. It was the most banal idea about a war, Michael knew, that if of fatality, but it was impossible not to think of it, impossible not to think of the casual threads of accident on which we survive to face the next if that comes tomorrow.

Irwin Shaw

#45. Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.

Irwin Shaw

#46. Now,' Elias said, 'if only I didn't have to go home to my lousy wife. I married her in 1929. A lot of things've changed since 1929.' He sighed. 'What's a woman?' he asked. 'A Woman is a trap.

Irwin Shaw

#47. 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

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#50. 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

#51. Our imperfections are the bonds that hold us together. We might as well recognize them.

Irwin Shaw

#52. 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

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

Irwin Shaw

#54. Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

#58. All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.

Irwin Shaw