Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Conversation
Coins
Habit
Dropping
Deep
Wasted
Water
Stopping
Words
Pool
Untouchable
Truth
Rarely
Owen
Would
Remain
Sank
Like
Bottom
Remarks
More quotes by John Irving
Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
John Irving
He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
John Irving
The more clearly one sees this world the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
John Irving
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
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
John Irving
There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.
John Irving
I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.
John Irving
Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.
John Irving
. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .
John Irving
Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.
John Irving
A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
John Irving
So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.
John Irving
Keep passing the open windows.
John Irving
My life is a reading list.
John Irving
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
John Irving
You think you have a memory but it has you!
John Irving
And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.
John Irving
Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
John Irving
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
John Irving
My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.
John Irving
