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
Something
Adult
Way
Ambition
Adults
Childhood
Dies
Moment
Moments
Become
Robs

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.
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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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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When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.
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Rituals are comforting rituals combat loneliness.
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I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.
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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Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
John Irving
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But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.
John Irving
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I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
John Irving
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It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
John Irving
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When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
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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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.
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You think you have a memory but it has you!
John Irving
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Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
John Irving
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Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.
John Irving
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A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed.
John Irving
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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving