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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Preferred
Written
Firsts
First
Writing
Always
Longhand
Drafts

More quotes by John Irving

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The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.
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You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
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My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!
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For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.
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You think you have a memory but it has you!
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O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
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If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?
John Irving
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Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!
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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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
John Irving
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There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
John Irving
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
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People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
John Irving
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So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.
John Irving
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If you asked me one day, I might say, Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious. If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, No.
John Irving
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Imagining something is better than remembering something.
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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I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions.
John Irving
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The object of war is to survive it.
John Irving
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Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
John Irving