Quote

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Write
Uncover
Keep
Casualties
Stories
Searching
Writing
Victims
Victim
Novel
Looking
Actually

More quotes by 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.
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… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
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You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
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The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
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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.
John Irving
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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.
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You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
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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.
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There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.
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Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
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She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
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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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I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed and we kept praying. Even as awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany.
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Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
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You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.
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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.
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When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
John Irving