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

John Irving

If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING

Caricatures Enough Long
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
JOHN IRVING

Creative Maps Writing
I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
JOHN IRVING

Country Hopeful Thinking
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.
JOHN IRVING

Kind Thinking Together
My life is a reading list.
JOHN IRVING

Life Lists Reading
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING

Condescend Inferiors People
People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.
JOHN IRVING

People Sound Trying
If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING

Moral Pride Sin
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Combat Comforting Loneliness
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
JOHN IRVING

Lessons Moral
You can’t learn everything you need to know legally.
JOHN IRVING

Feet Knows Needs
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.
JOHN IRVING

Scene Treatment Voice
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVING

Anticipation Excitement Thrill
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
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
JOHN IRVING

Exhausting Knows Seventeen
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

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

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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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Popular Authors

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