All That Is Quotes

“He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“Age doesn't arrive slowly, it comes in a rush. One day nothing has changed, a week later, everything has. A week may be too long a time, it can happen overnight. You are the same and still the same and suddenly one morning two distinct lines, ineradicable, have appeared at the corners of your mouth.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“It was love, the furnace into which everything was dropped.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“Summer mornings, the light of the world pouring in and the silence. It was a barefoot life, the cool of the night on the floorboards, the green trees if you stepped outside, the first faint cries of the birds. He arrived in a suit and didn’t put it on again until he went back to the city.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“Dresscodes are for styleless people.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“There was a time, usually late in August, when summer struck the trees with dazzling power and they were rich with leaves but then became, suddenly one day, strangely still, as if in expectation and at that moment aware. They knew. Everything knew, the beetles, the frogs, the crows solemnly walking across the lawn. The sun was at its zenith and embraced the world, but it was ending, all that one loved was at risk.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“incandescent afternoons in Spain, the shutters closed, a blade of sun burning into the darkness.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“The only light was a standing lamp by his chair, near his elbow was a drink. He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“He had never been particularly young, or to put it another way, he had been young for a long time and now was at his true age, old enough for civilized comfrots and not too old for the primal ones.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“When Vivian began to recover they brought her a fluted glass vase with an arrangement of lilies and yellow roses from the flower shop on Eighteenth Street owned by an elegant man Arthur had once been involved with, Christos, who was friends with both of them. He, too, loved the theater and everything about it. Later he opened a restaurant.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“Bowman, too, had been born in a great city, in the French Hospital in Manhattan, in the burning heat of August and very early in the morning when all geniuses are born, as Pearson once told him. There had been an unbreathing stillness, and near dawn faint, distant thunder. It grew slowly louder, then gusts of cooler air before a tremendous storm broke with lightning and sheets of rain, and when it was over,”
― James Salter, All That Is

“What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“stripped of all but a single, last possession, a ring, a photograph, or letter that represented everything dearest and forever left behind that they somehow hoped, it being so small, they would be able to take with them. He had such a letter, from Enid. The days I spent with you were the greatest days of my life …”
― James Salter, All That Is

“To the world she knew, to the few friends who had by then drifted away, to everyone except himself and Dorothy, it was no longer important that she live. What had been her life, the people she knew and the deep pool of memory and knowing, had vanished or dried up and fallen apart.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“They were seated to one side, but to be with her was to be seen by everyone.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“The bombing of the main islands of Japan was now possible, and in the most massive of the raids, a firebombing of Tokyo, more than eighty thousand people died in the huge inferno in a single night.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“Of Bryan, it might be said that he was candid about his wife and uncomplaining. He treated her offhandedly, as he might treat bad weather.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“There were other houses that always brought images of an orderly life, kitchens with plain sideboards, old windows, the comforts of marriage in their common form, which at times surpassed everything—breakfast in the morning, conversations, late hours, and nothing that suggested excess or decay.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“Mentre sedevano vicini o mangiavano o camminavano, lui condivideva liberamente con lei i suoi pensieri e le sue idee sulla vita, la storia, l’arte. Le parlava di ogni cosa. Sapeva che lei non si interessava a quegli argomenti, però capiva e col tempo avrebbe imparato. Lui non l’amava soltanto per quello che era, ma per quello che poteva essere, e l’idea che potesse essere diversa non gli passava per la testa, oppure non gliene importava. Perché avrebbe dovuto pensarci? Quando ami qualcuno vedi il futuro come lo sogni.”
― James Salter, All That Is