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When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Director
Directors
Novel
Write
Feel
Feels
Writing
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More quotes by John Irving

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There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.
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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
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The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.
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She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
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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.
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Imagining something is better than remembering something.
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… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign it is at least a form of being human.
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If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
John Irving
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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.
John Irving
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If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.
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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And never forget, there is memory.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!
John Irving
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…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
John Irving
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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
John Irving
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There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.
John Irving
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
John Irving
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Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
John Irving
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Thus we try to keep our heroes alive hence we remember them.
John Irving