Top 46 Quotes by Irwin Shaw

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

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

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

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.

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

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

It's those damn critics again.

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

My favorite short-story writer is John Cheever.

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