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It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Trying
Make
Like
Sound
Someone

More quotes by John Irving

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My life is a reading list.
John Irving
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The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign it is at least a form of being human.
John Irving
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Our memory is a monster you forget it - it does not.
John Irving
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I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
John Irving
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I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.
John Irving
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You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
John Irving
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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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Imagining something is better than remembering something.
John Irving
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And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.
John Irving
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I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
John Irving
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
John Irving
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O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
John Irving
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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
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In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
John Irving
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And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
John Irving
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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one. But we are a country - USA - that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.
John Irving
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You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
John Irving
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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
John Irving