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People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
People
Questions
Ready
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More quotes by John Irving

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O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
John Irving
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A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed.
John Irving
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You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.
John Irving
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The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.
John Irving
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There's nothing as scary as the future.
John Irving
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There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!
John Irving
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It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.
John Irving
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I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy.
John Irving
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When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
John Irving
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You think you have a memory but it has you!
John Irving
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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
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So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.
John Irving
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
John Irving
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Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax.
John Irving
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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.
John Irving
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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
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I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful.
John Irving
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Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.
John Irving