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I don't begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Voice
Begin
Surrounding
Happens
Usually
Paragraph
Many
Novel
Addition
Results
Sentence
Written
Final
Knowing
Finals
Lasts
Sentences
Paragraphs
Last
Result
Thereof

More quotes by 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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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
John Irving
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Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
John Irving
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It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
John Irving
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Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
John Irving
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A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed.
John Irving
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I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy.
John Irving
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Half my life is an act of revision.
John Irving
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You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
John Irving
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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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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving
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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
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It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
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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When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
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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Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.
John Irving
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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
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This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
John Irving
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Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.
John Irving