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Irwin Shaw [1913-1984] American

Rank: 101
Novelist, Playwright

Irwin Shaw was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies.

Attitude, Romantic, Sports

Quote	Tags	Rank
My attitudes have changed, but somebody would have to read all my books to find out how they have.	Attitude	101
A writer has to live with a sense of honor.		102
The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out.		103
No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys it, even if he doesn't get paid.		104
Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.	Sports	105
A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.		106
In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.		107
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.		108
Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.		109
I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.		110
I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.		111
At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.		112
Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House.		113
Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.		114
In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.		115
People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly.		116
Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all.		117
I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.		118
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.		119
Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.		120
Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.		121
I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.		122
It's those damn critics again.		123
All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.		124
I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written.		125
My views naturally have mellowed. Most of the critics have been more or less nice to me.		126
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.		201
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.	Romantic	202
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.		203
Writers of fiction, when they begin, are more likely to try the short form.		204
You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer.		205
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.		206
If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.		207
I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans.		208
In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75.		209
Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.		210
The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.		211
I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.		212
I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.		213
The writer works in a lonely way.		214
In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody.		215
A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor.		216
My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.		217
I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various.		218
Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing.		219
I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?		220

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