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A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.
John Irving
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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Work
Walls
Architecture
Bathrooms
Piece
Confessional
Wall
Wallowing
Novel
Floors
Pieces
Diaries
Building
Random
Writing
Bathroom
More quotes by John Irving
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
If I had to be anything, he told her, I'd probably be a socialist, but I don't want to be anything.
John Irving
I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.
John Irving
It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
John Irving
I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
John Irving
We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving
I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.
John Irving
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
John Irving
It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
John Irving
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.
John Irving
… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
John Irving
Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
John Irving
She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
John Irving
People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
John Irving
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
John Irving
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
John Irving
Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
John Irving
… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign it is at least a form of being human.
John Irving
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
John Irving
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
John Irving
