Quote

Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Must
Hell
Suffered
Giving
Special
Receiving
Called
Admit
Time
Since
Christmas
Felt
Families
Spirit
Lack
Home
Aware
Greedy
Ever
Loss
Imperfection

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You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.
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In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
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Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!
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Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
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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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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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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
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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.
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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.
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Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.
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It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.
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If you asked me one day, I might say, Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious. If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, No.
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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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