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I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Finding
Language
Matter
Going
Findings

More quotes by 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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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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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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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 don't begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.
John Irving
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There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.
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 always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
John Irving
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Half my life is an act of revision.
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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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.
John Irving
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And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
John Irving
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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
John Irving
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Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
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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If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
John Irving
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My life is a reading list.
John Irving
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Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven
John Irving
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Our memory is a monster you forget it - it does not.
John Irving
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Imagining something is better than remembering something.
John Irving