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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Stronger
Personal
Philanthropy
Injustice
Instinct
Motivation

More quotes by John Irving

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Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
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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.
John Irving
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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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I don’t have to say to you or anyone in our WRESTLING community that we are a small world unto ourselves and there is often a big difference in how much we love and understand each other and how little we’re understood or appreciated by people who spend their weekends watching basketball.
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The more clearly one sees this world the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
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I don't begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.
John Irving
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Keep passing the open windows.
John Irving
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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!
John Irving
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I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.
John Irving
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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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But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.
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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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In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy.
John Irving
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The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.
John Irving
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Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.
John Irving
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I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.
John Irving