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Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Truth
Rarely
Owen
Would
Remain
Sank
Like
Bottom
Remarks
Conversation
Coins
Habit
Dropping
Deep
Wasted
Water
Stopping
Words
Pool
Untouchable

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She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
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My brain is sending poison to my heart.
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Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.
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When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
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You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
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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.
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
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Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
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So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.
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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!
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but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
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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.
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Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
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Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.
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The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
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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)
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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.
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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
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Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!
John Irving