Irwin Shaw Quotes
A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much. A writer has to live with a sense of honor. A writer is a human being. He has to live with a sense of honor. All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one. 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. At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded. Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all. Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy. Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory. I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself. I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel? I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans. I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various. I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal. I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober. I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it. I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written. I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young. I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it. If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.
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