Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
John Irving
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Seventeen
Exhausting
More quotes by John Irving
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
John Irving
Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
John Irving
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
Half my life is an act of revision.
John Irving
Thus we try to keep our heroes alive hence we remember them.
John Irving
You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
John Irving
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
John Irving
The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.
John Irving
You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We - Americans - permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
John Irving
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.
John Irving
People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
John Irving
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
John Irving
The concept of writing a novel and not knowing where it's going - I don't know how to do that. Novels are plot- and character-driven, so if I don't know what becomes of people, how can I know where it should begin?
John Irving
Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven
John Irving
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.
John Irving
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
There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.
John Irving
You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
John Irving
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.
John Irving
Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
John Irving