Quote

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
Purpose
Disciplined
Success
Wrestling
Anything
Instrument
Firsts
Tennis
First
Longing
Thing
Instruments
Devoting
Good
Musical
Confirmed
Dance
Skiing

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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.
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Kids are beautiful, man. And they know much more than grownups think they know. Kids are just perfect people until grownups get their hands on them.
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I think that was when the headmaster realized he had lost he realized then that he was finished. Because, what could he do? Was he going to tell us to stop praying? We kept our heads bowed and we kept praying. Even as awkward as he was, the Rev. Mr. Merrill had made it clear to us that there was no end to praying for Owen Meany.
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Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.
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Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story rumors don't care what's true.
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If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
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It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
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Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you
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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?
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If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?
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Imagining something is better than remembering something.
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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.
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Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
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I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.
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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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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.
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