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The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.

John Irving

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING

Art Hard Work Serious
When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it – rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
JOHN IRVING

Stories Want Writing
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.
JOHN IRVING

Ability Burden Feels
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Combat Comforting Loneliness
A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.
JOHN IRVING

Boiled Life Sentences
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
JOHN IRVING

Stories Victim Writing
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.”
JOHN IRVING

Another Day Religious
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
JOHN IRVING

Children Moments Parent
You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
JOHN IRVING

Beginning Ends Grows Growth
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING

Condescend Inferiors People
My life is a reading list.
JOHN IRVING

Life Lists Reading
No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin – only four years older than I am – everything, or what little I could discover about him.
JOHN IRVING

Cousin Father Years
He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
JOHN IRVING

Coincidence Novel Young
You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING

Obsessed Obsession Psychology
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING

Cases Meany Owen World
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

Funeral Hymns Thinking

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.

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The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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