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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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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Years
Teenage
Sunday
Expected
Painful
Grew
Wasn
Church
Family
Terribly
More quotes by John Irving
In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
John Irving
Half my life is an act of revision.
John Irving
Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
John Irving
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
. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .
John Irving
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
Rituals are comforting rituals combat loneliness.
John Irving
I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.
John Irving
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving
…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.
John Irving
It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
John Irving
Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.
John Irving
The object of war is to survive it.
John Irving
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
Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.
John Irving
In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
John Irving
Like many successful people he made good use of disappointments - responding to them with energy, with near-frenzied activity, rather than needing to recover from them.
John Irving
It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
John Irving
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
John Irving
We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving