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" 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

Short

Early

Great

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" I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young. "

Irwin Shaw

Young

Hopeful

" Curiously, the United States is full of writers who have one big work in their life and that's all. "

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

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

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

" Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy. "

Irwin Shaw

Deal

Writer

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

" In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices. "

" People who light up like Roman candles come down in the dark very quickly. "

Irwin Shaw

Dark

Down

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

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

Irwin Shaw

Become

First

" In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody. "

" In Europe, a writer is supposed to improve up until he's about 75. "

Irwin Shaw

Improve

Until

" I don't think that the writer is regarded as a freak by Americans. "

" Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American. "

" A writer has to live with a sense of honor. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that. "

" 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. "

" I never show anything to anybody until I've finished it. "

" I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various. "

" The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves. "

" 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. "

" Kennedy was a man who liked writers and even I got invited to the White House. "

" My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever. "

" 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. "

" 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

Glasses

Dead