Quote

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Mother
Burns
Hands
Jack
Fingers
Mom
Hold
Needed
Hand
Dark

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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
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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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Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.
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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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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.
John Irving
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And never forget, there is memory.
John Irving
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You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
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People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.
John Irving
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Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
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If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?
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When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
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You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
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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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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
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He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
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It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
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Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
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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