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Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

John Irving

O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING

Asking Giving Please
You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I’m going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life
JOHN IRVING

Adventure Everybody Father Real
The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face; he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he’d not yet seen.
JOHN IRVING

Hair Ocean Powerful
You don’t want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.
JOHN IRVING

Character Giving People
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
JOHN IRVING

Believe Children Church
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!
JOHN IRVING

Mean People Religious
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING

Scary Writing
Death, it seems,” Garp wrote, “does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.
JOHN IRVING

Death Dramatic Indulgent Waiting
If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING

Moral Pride Sin
In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
JOHN IRVING

Energy Father Grandmother
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
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you’re going to be in this business, if you’re going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
JOHN IRVING

Actor Skins Thinking
When writing a novel, I’m not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don’t know what it is.
JOHN IRVING

Enough Smart Writing
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Combat Comforting Loneliness
Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president’s particular agenda – and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American.
JOHN IRVING

Agendas Blind Presidential
Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Hatred Loneliness Self

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

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Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

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Popular Authors

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