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Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Firsts
Tennis
First
Longing
Thing
Instruments
Devoting
Good
Musical
Confirmed
Dance
Skiing
Purpose
Disciplined
Success
Wrestling
Anything
Instrument

More quotes by John Irving

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If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
John Irving
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I have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is that it makes me write at the speed that I feel I should be composing, rather than faster than I can think, which is what happens to me on any keyboard.
John Irving
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And never forget, there is memory.
John Irving
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Imagining something is better than remembering something.
John Irving
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The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.
John Irving
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…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
John Irving
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
John Irving
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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
John Irving
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I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.
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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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.
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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My life is a reading list.
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
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Rituals are comforting rituals combat loneliness.
John Irving
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Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
John Irving
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People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
John Irving
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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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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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I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure. It doesn't bother me if people feel that way.
John Irving