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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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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Little
Wells
Flat
Might
Flats
Well
Asked
Feel
Bits
Sometimes
Religious
Feels
Another
Littles

More quotes by John Irving

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I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.
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Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.
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Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
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I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.
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Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.
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Keep passing the open windows.
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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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Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax.
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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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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.
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No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.
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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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It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.
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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
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Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.
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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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You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.
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You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
John Irving
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Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
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When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.
John Irving