Quote

My life is a reading list.

John Irving

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign it is at least a form of being human.
John Irving
Image
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
John Irving
Image
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
John Irving
Image
Like many successful people he made good use of disappointments - responding to them with energy, with near-frenzied activity, rather than needing to recover from them.
John Irving
Image
You think you have a memory but it has you!
John Irving
Image
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
John Irving
Image
No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.
John Irving
Image
Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
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
Image
My brain is sending poison to my heart.
John Irving
Image
He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
John Irving