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You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Giving
Leaping
Trying
Decipher
Men
Tattoos
Headache
Tattoo
Naked
Bed
Give

More quotes by John Irving

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Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
John Irving
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… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
John Irving
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
John Irving
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When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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You think you have a memory but it has you!
John Irving
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All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man.
John Irving
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In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
John Irving
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She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
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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What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
John Irving
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Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)
John Irving
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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
John Irving
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I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.
John Irving
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You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
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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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.
John Irving
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I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.
John Irving
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And never forget, there is memory.
John Irving