James Salter Quotes

Actually, the 14 novels were written over a period of just over 6 years.

I write four or five a books a year. That means that I usually have one on the go. I am fortunate in being able to write quickly - 1000 words an hour.

I seem to produce a novel approximately once every three years.

I write at a pace that suits me, and sometimes it's two books a year, but most often it's one.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

Since 1988, I have been writing steadily. I did decide a couple of years or so ago to scale back to writing one book a year - a sort of semi-retirement. But I never did have much success with that plan!

I've written thousands of stories, started hundreds of news cycles.

I don't write constantly; it's two serials and a novel a year.

I've always been a very prolific writer.

It just happens I write fast and always have done.

If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year. I don't manage nearly that... but I have published slightly too much recently.

And then I wrote my first autobiography when I - well, it was 23 years ago. And since then I've written about one book every two years.

In 2007, I probably wrote four screenplays in the entire year. Every three months I was writing a screenplay.

The most common misperception about me is that I write fast. I just write often. Every hour that I can.

You're always told by your publisher that you must only write one book a year and some years you should perhaps write none at all.

Talent is a matter of quantity. Talent does not write on page, it writes three hundred.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn't write? But that fortunately hasn't proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

You know, I haven't written as much as most other writers. Certainly maybe those who keep a more regular schedule accomplish more.

I don't finish every story, but I probably write and send out three out of five of them.

I've always been ambidextrous, writing short stories and novels, and I pretty much have been writing a novel and a handful of short stories every year since '91.

I don't write as much now as I used to, but I write. The lines still come, maybe periodically, and I'll go through these little bursts of time where I write a lot of things then a long period of time where maybe I don't write anything.

Some days I'm lucky to squeeze out a page of copy that pleases me, but I get as many as six or seven pages on a very good day; the average is probably three pages.

I think now I'm up to something like 85 different titles that I've published.

I'm not the slowest writer that you know.

In the first year, 1988, I wrote and sold 3 novels.