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I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.

John Irving

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John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Guess
Waiting
Even
Always
Slower
Slow
Patient

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You think you have a memory but it has you!
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What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
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You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
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Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.
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Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either
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I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.
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The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.
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I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.
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It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
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Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
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And never forget, there is memory.
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I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
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You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
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Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
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The concept of writing a novel and not knowing where it's going - I don't know how to do that. Novels are plot- and character-driven, so if I don't know what becomes of people, how can I know where it should begin?
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A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
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Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.
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Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)
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but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
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If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life.
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