Quote

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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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Takes
Head
Start
Write
Writing
Long
Ignorance
Novel

More quotes by John Irving

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He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
John Irving
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So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion.
John Irving
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The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving
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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
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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
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If you asked me one day, I might say, Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious. If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, No.
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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You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed.
John Irving
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The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he’d not yet seen.
John Irving
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The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.
John Irving
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So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.
John Irving
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… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign it is at least a form of being human.
John Irving
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The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.
John Irving
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You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life
John Irving
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
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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For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.
John Irving
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I don’t have to say to you or anyone in our WRESTLING community that we are a small world unto ourselves and there is often a big difference in how much we love and understand each other and how little we’re understood or appreciated by people who spend their weekends watching basketball.
John Irving
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Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story rumors don't care what's true.
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