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but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Writers
Behavior
Knew
Human
Humans
Imitators
Good
Imitator
Observers
Ruthless

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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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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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Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
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Keep passing the open windows.
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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
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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.
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Half my life is an act of revision.
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If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
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I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
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If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.
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It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
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…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
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Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda - and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American.
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There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
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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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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.
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It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
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Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
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