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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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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Write
Remembering
Happens
Sentence
Stories
Sentences
Remember
Finally
Firsts
Already
Everything
Happened
First
Story
Writing
Rather
Inventing
More quotes by John Irving
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
Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either
John Irving
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
John Irving
Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
John Irving
…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
John Irving
Our memory is a monster you forget it - it does not.
John Irving
You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.
John Irving
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
It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.
John Irving
Rituals are comforting rituals combat loneliness.
John Irving
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
It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support they want someone to say, Good job.
John Irving
Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?
John Irving
You think you have a memory but it has you!
John Irving
And never forget, there is memory.
John Irving
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
John Irving
When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.
John Irving
I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.
John Irving
A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.
John Irving
The object of war is to survive it.
John Irving
