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And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Spend
Writer
Alone
Part
Better
Diminished
Find
Hasn
Time
Capacity
Like
Necessary

More quotes by John Irving

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He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
John Irving
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I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
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You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.
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You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed.
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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
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You think you have a memory but it has you!
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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.
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He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
John Irving
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The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.
John Irving
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I'm not a movie person. They're collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.
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Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
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Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!
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When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
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
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In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?
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Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.
John Irving
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Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.
John Irving
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When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
John Irving
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And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.
John Irving
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
John Irving