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Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Loneliness
Hatred
Worse
Self

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There's nothing as scary as the future.
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This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
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I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.
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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.
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O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
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Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.
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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
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Half my life is an act of revision.
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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.
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… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
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I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.
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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.
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The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.
John Irving
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And never forget, there is memory.
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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving