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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
More quotes by John Irving
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
Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.
John Irving
Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!
John Irving
You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We - Americans - permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
John Irving
Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.
John Irving
. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .
John Irving
Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
John Irving
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
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
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.
John Irving
For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.
John Irving
A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy
John Irving
If you asked me one day, I might say, Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious. If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, No.
John Irving
Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
John Irving
It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
John Irving
Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax.
John Irving
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)
John Irving
You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
John Irving
…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
John Irving
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.
John Irving
