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If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Love
Presume
Product
Finished
Products
Process
Must
Much
Something

More quotes by John Irving

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I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
John Irving
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Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
John Irving
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Keep passing the open windows.
John Irving
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Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!
John Irving
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I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.
John Irving
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Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you
John Irving
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Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)
John Irving
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I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure. It doesn't bother me if people feel that way.
John Irving
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The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.
John Irving
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Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
John Irving
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If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.
John Irving
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I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.
John Irving
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Life is an X-rated soap opera.
John Irving
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Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
John Irving
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O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
John Irving
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Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
John Irving
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Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
John Irving
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They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other.... or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.
John Irving
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It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
John Irving
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I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.
John Irving