Quote

You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.

John Irving

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Stop
Opportunity
Given
Take
Many
Even
Every
World
Opportunities

More quotes by John Irving

Image
The more clearly one sees this world the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
John Irving
Image
Half my life is an act of revision.
John Irving
Image
My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.
John Irving
Image
The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.
John Irving
Image
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
John Irving
Image
It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
John Irving
Image
It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
John Irving
Image
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
John Irving
Image
So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.
John Irving
Image
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
John Irving
Image
Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
John Irving
Image
Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.
John Irving
Image
There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
John Irving
Image
Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either
John Irving
Image
When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
John Irving
Image
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