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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

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Dear
Please
Boys
Make
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More quotes by John Irving

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If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.
John Irving
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You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
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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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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It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
John Irving
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Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?
John Irving
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Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
John Irving
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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
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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
John Irving
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It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
John Irving
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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
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You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.
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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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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Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.
John Irving
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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
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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I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed and we kept praying. Even as awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany.
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 have a very poor record at multiple choice questions.
John Irving