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I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
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Happen
Story
Scenario
Happens
Magnet
Stories
Scenarios
Persons
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Cases
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Worst

More quotes by 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.
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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
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I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
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Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
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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
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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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If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.
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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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
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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.
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People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
John Irving
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Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!
John Irving
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I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful.
John Irving
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The object of war is to survive it.
John Irving
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There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
John Irving
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If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?
John Irving
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A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy
John Irving
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You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
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