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I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
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Novelists
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More quotes by John Irving

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I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
John Irving
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving
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I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.
John Irving
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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?
John Irving
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There's nothing as scary as the future.
John Irving
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I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
John Irving
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Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
John Irving
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It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.
John Irving
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Half my life is an act of revision.
John Irving
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But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.
John Irving
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
John Irving
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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.
John Irving
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He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
John Irving
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Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story rumors don't care what's true.
John Irving
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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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You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
John Irving
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… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
John Irving
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There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.
John Irving