Quote

My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!

John Irving

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Label
Categories
Labels
Dear
Please
Boys
Make
Category

More quotes by John Irving

Image
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
John Irving
Image
If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?
John Irving
Image
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
John Irving
Image
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
John Irving
Image
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
Image
Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!
John Irving
Image
I don’t have to say to you or anyone in our WRESTLING community that we are a small world unto ourselves and there is often a big difference in how much we love and understand each other and how little we’re understood or appreciated by people who spend their weekends watching basketball.
John Irving
Image
I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.
John Irving
Image
She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
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
Image
…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
John Irving
Image
Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you
John Irving
Image
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
John Irving
Image
There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.
John Irving
Image
All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man.
John Irving
Image
People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
John Irving
Image
It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
John Irving
Image
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
Image
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
John Irving