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I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Behavior
Interested
Quite
Stories
Believe
Breaking
Consequences
Consequence
Rules

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Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
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Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
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They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other.... or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.
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You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
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Half my life is an act of revision.
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It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.
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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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Thus we try to keep our heroes alive hence we remember them.
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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.
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There's nothing as scary as the future.
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I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
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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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People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.
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I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
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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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You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed.
John Irving