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John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Needs
Legally
Feet
Learn
Everything
Need

More quotes by John Irving

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I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
John Irving
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Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.
John Irving
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Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.
John Irving
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The concept of writing a novel and not knowing where it's going - I don't know how to do that. Novels are plot- and character-driven, so if I don't know what becomes of people, how can I know where it should begin?
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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It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
John Irving
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In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
John Irving
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Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
John Irving
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I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
John Irving
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In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
John Irving
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In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
John Irving
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The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.
John Irving
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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
John Irving
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I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions.
John Irving
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When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
John Irving
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Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.
John Irving
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving
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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
John Irving
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When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.
John Irving
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A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed.
John Irving