Irwin Shaw Quotes

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Irwin Shaw

Profession : Novelist

Birth : February 27, 1913

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

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

It's those damn critics again.

Irwin Shaw

A writer has to live with a sense of honor.

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

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

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw

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

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

Irwin Shaw

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

Irwin Shaw