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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
Rules
Behavior
Interested
Quite
Stories
Believe
Breaking
Consequences
Consequence

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Our memory is a monster you forget it - it does not.
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There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
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Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
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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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She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
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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.
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I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
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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.
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If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
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Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven
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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually and almost everyone needs to.
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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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I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
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You think you have a memory but it has you!
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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.
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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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Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.
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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.
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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