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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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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Sense
Calamity
Night
Supportive
Nothing
Perfectly
Imaginings
Made
Wild
Owen
Good
Inspired
Calamities
Amazing
Philosophies
Philosophy
Fright
Friends
Charged

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It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support they want someone to say, Good job.
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
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But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.
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The object of war is to survive it.
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O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
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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.
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I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.
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I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.
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I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.
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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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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
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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
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It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
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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.
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I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
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I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.
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I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
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All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man.
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You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We - Americans - permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
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Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda - and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American.
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