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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.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Humans
War
Wars
Self
Death
Complete
Take
Felt
Destruction
Famines
Believe
Certain
Beings
Indulging
Way
Littles
Longer
Embarrass
Would
Little
Stop
Perils
World
Might
Possible
Famine
Human
Less
Peril

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He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
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People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
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Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.
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Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.
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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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No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.
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In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
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The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.
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The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he’d not yet seen.
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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 don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.
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And never forget, there is memory.
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Life is an X-rated soap opera.
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Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven
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O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
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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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Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.
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Your memory is a monster you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory but it has you!
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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
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Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
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