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My life is a reading list.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
List
Lists
Reading
Life

More quotes by John Irving

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I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions.
John Irving
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I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.
John Irving
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A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.
John Irving
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The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.
John Irving
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There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.
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 think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
John Irving
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When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
John Irving
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Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.
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 only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
John Irving
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Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.
John Irving
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I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.
John Irving
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I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed and we kept praying. Even as awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany.
John Irving
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You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
John Irving
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There's nothing as scary as the future.
John Irving
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Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.
John Irving
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You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life
John Irving
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Imagining something is better than remembering something.
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