Irwin Shaw > Quotes

“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

“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

“I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?”
― 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

“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

“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, Short Stories of Irwin Shaw

“All writers are the same - they forget a thousand good reviews and remember one bad one.”
― Irwin Shaw

“ما قيمة هذه الدنيا التي تتعلقون بها ؟ ..”
― Irwin Shaw, Bury The Dead

“If the players were armed with guns, there wouldn’t be stadiums large enough to hold the crowds. ”
― Irwin Shaw

“Critics in New York are made by their dislikes, not by their enthusiasms.”
― Irwin Shaw

“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

“When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. . . . I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it.”
― Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions

“A taste of luxury is part of the education of any intelligent human being. It teaches him how unnecessary it is.”
― Irwin Shaw, Bread Upon the Waters

“It is always necessary to remain barbarians, because it is the barbarians who always win.”
― Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions

“Our imperfections are the bonds that hold us together. We might as well recognize them.”
― Irwin Shaw, Bread Upon the Waters

“Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.”
― Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions

“يجب أن تترك الفرصة للإنسان ليمضي إلى قبره في هدوء ولا يقذف به إليه قذفا”
― Irwin Shaw, ثورة الموتى

“The world," said Pavone, "will swing to the left. The whole world except America. The world will swing, not because people read Karl Marx, or because agitators will come out of Russia, but because, after the war is over, that will be the only way they can turn. Everything else will have been tried, everything else will have failed. And I am afraid that American will be isolated, hated, backward, we will all be living there like old maids in a lonely house in the woods, locking the doors, looking under the beds, with a fortune in the mattress, not being able to sleep, because every time the wind blows and a floor creaks, we will think the murderers are breaking in to kill us and take our treasure...”
― Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions

“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, Rich Man, Poor Man

“The modern world, he thought resentfully, prepares you very poorly for the tests it puts you to.”
― Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions

“This time it is not a simple, understandable war, within the same culture. This time it is an assault of the animal world upon the house of the human being. I don’t know what you saw in Africa and Italy, but I know what I saw in Russia and Poland. We made a cemetery a thousand miles long and a thousand miles wide. Men, women, children, Poles, Russians, Jews, it made no difference. It could not be compared to any human action. It could be compared to a weasel in a henhouse. It was as though we felt that if we left anything alive in the East, it would one day bear witness against us and condemn us. And, now, we have made the final mistake. We are losing the war”
― Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions

“Why does a man spend fifty years of his life in an occupation that is often painful? I once told a class I was teaching that writing is an intellectual contact sport, similar in some respects to football. The effort required can be exhausting, the goal unreached, and you are hurt on almost every play; but that doesn’t deprive a man or a boy from getting peculiar pleasures from the game.”
― Irwin Shaw, Short Stories: Five Decades

“По едно време той беше промърморил "Завинаги" с устни, опрени до гърлото ѝ, и сега тя си спомни това, като си мислеше колко млад трябва да е човек, за да каже "завинаги".”
― Irwin Shaw, Lucy Crown

“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, Short Stories: Five Decades

“The war's not over yet,' Jordache said. 'There's still a lot of idiots waiting that have to be killed.”
― Irwin Shaw, Rich Man, Poor Man

“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, The Young Lions

“You’re a good model for a German soldier, except for the hair. You look as though you once had a thought in your head and that’s hard to find.”
― Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions

“Cannes was to blame, he told himself defensively. It was a city made for the indulgence of the senses, all ease and sunshine and provocative flesh.
“What had he seen, what had he learned? He had seen all kinds of movies, good and bad, mostly bad. He had been plunged into a carnival, a delirium of film. In the halls, on the terraces, on the beach, at the parties, the art or industry or whatever it deserved to be called in these few days was exposed at its essence. The whole thing was there—the artists and pseudo-artists, the businessmen, the con men, the buyers and sellers, the peddlers, the whores, the pornographers, critics, hangers-on, the year’s heroes, the year’s failures. And then the distillation of what it was all about, a film of Bergman's and one of Bunuel's, pure and devastating.”
― Irwin Shaw, Evening in Byzantium

“الاطفالا لا يسعدون الفقراء ، لا هم ولا أي شيء آخر يمكن أن يسعدهم”
― Irwin Shaw, ثورة الموتى

“ينبغي على هؤلاء الرجال الذين ظلوا يموتون منذ آلاف السنين من أجل فرعون وقيصر وروما "
، أن ينتبهوا في نهاية الأمر -وقبل أن يضيع كل أمل- إلى أن الإنسان قد يموت وهو سعيد ، ويُدفن وهو راضٍ
"... حينما يموت في سبيل نفسه أو في سبيل وطنه حقاً، أو لسبب يهمه هو ولا يهم فرعون أو قيصر أو روما”
― Irwin Shaw, ثورة الموتى