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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
War
Survive
Object
Objects

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He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
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People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.
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Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
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You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.
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Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
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Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.
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Like many successful people he made good use of disappointments - responding to them with energy, with near-frenzied activity, rather than needing to recover from them.
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Imagining something is better than remembering something.
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And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.
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I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.
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Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)
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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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I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.
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…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
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When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
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It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support they want someone to say, Good job.
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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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Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.
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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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