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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
Church
Family
Terribly
Years
Teenage
Sunday
Expected
Painful
Grew
Wasn

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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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Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.
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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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Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story rumors don't care what's true.
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The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.
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There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
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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.
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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.
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It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
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And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
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Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.
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Your memory is a monster you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory but it has you!
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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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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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Keep passing the open windows.
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I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
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It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support they want someone to say, Good job.
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You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.
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I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.
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