Quote

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Lovers
Longer
Friends
Learn
Keep
Part

More quotes by John Irving

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If I had to be anything, he told her, I'd probably be a socialist, but I don't want to be anything.
John Irving
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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
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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The more clearly one sees this world the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
John Irving
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I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign it is at least a form of being human.
John Irving
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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
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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
John Irving
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Our memory is a monster you forget it - it does not.
John Irving
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What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
John Irving
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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving
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Life is an X-rated soap opera.
John Irving
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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
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but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
John Irving
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It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
John Irving
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There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
John Irving
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Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.
John Irving
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I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.
John Irving
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I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
John Irving