Quote

Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Become
Robs
Something
Adult
Way
Ambition
Adults
Childhood
Dies
Moment
Moments

More quotes by John Irving

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He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
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If I had to be anything, he told her, I'd probably be a socialist, but I don't want to be anything.
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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.
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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.
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Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.
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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.
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If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
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When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
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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.
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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
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There's nothing as scary as the future.
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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
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People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
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You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
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I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.
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… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign it is at least a form of being human.
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It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
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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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You think you have a memory but it has you!
John Irving
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
John Irving