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The object of war is to survive it.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Objects
War
Survive
Object

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It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
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Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
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I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.
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I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
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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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Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
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Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven
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I'm not a movie person. They're collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.
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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.
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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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Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.
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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
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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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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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I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.
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It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
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Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.
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So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
John Irving