Quote

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

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Joseph
Putting
Costume
Touch
Costumes
Baby
Include
Barb
Parents
Cows
Appellation
Parent
Barbs
Poor
Touching
Beth
Jesus
Mary
Proclaimed
Generous

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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
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Kids are beautiful, man. And they know much more than grownups think they know. Kids are just perfect people until grownups get their hands on them.
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There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
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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.
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There's nothing as scary as the future.
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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.
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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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It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
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When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
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I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful.
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Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.
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Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
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O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
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This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
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