A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.
Irwin Shaw

A writer has to live with a sense of honor.
Irwin Shaw

A writer is a human being. He 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

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

At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.
Irwin Shaw

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

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


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

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

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

I imagine that my characters have become much more complicated than when I first began, which would be normal.
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 never show anything to anybody until I've finished it.
Irwin Shaw

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

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.
Irwin Shaw

I've gone on the wagon, but my body doesn't believe it.
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