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You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.
John Irving
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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Interest
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Social
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Character
Begin
Give
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Giving
Novel
Ungenerous
Never
Relationship
Prizes
People
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More quotes by John Irving
Our memory is a monster you forget it - it does not.
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And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
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Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)
John Irving
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
John Irving
… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
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
You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
John Irving
They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other.... or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.
John Irving
The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.
John Irving
Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
John Irving
I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
John Irving
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
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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.
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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.
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Life is an X-rated soap opera.
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This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
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No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.
John Irving
I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
John Irving
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
John Irving