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. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Notice
Stop
Moments
Doe
Enough
Must
Time
Alert

More quotes by John Irving

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… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign it is at least a form of being human.
John Irving
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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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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
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I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.
John Irving
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I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure. It doesn't bother me if people feel that way.
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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The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.
John Irving
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You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
John Irving
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The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he’d not yet seen.
John Irving
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Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.
John Irving
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The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.
John Irving
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It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
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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The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
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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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.
John Irving
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If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
John Irving
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It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.
John Irving