Quote

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.

John Irving

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Years
Front
Months
Taking
Year
Story
Reconstructing
Stories
Reconstruction
Back
Notes
Sometimes
Fronts

More quotes by John Irving

Image
You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
John Irving
Image
You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
John Irving
Image
Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
John Irving
Image
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
John Irving
Image
There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
John Irving
Image
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.
John Irving
Image
I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.
John Irving
Image
Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.
John Irving
Image
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one. But we are a country - USA - that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.
John Irving
Image
We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving
Image
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.
John Irving
Image
Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
John Irving
Image
If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
John Irving
Image
I'm not at all contemporary, not even modern, and the fact that I would be so quaintly attracted to that wrestling rule makes me, I suppose, seem all the more old-fashioned. I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.
John Irving
Image
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
John Irving
Image
Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven
John Irving
Image
And never forget, there is memory.
John Irving
Image
I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.
John Irving
Image
You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.
John Irving
Image
Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you
John Irving