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If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Sin
Pride
Greatest
Moral

More quotes by John Irving

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Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
John Irving
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I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
John Irving
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It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.
John Irving
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I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
John Irving
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I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
John Irving
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So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.
John Irving
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving
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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
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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
John Irving
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You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy
John Irving
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Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
John Irving
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I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.
John Irving
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It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support they want someone to say, Good job.
John Irving
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There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?
John Irving
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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving