Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
JOHN IRVINGTHERE’S NO MONKEY BUSINESS ABOUT THIS ELECTION,’ he told the voters. ‘IF YOU’RE ENOUGH OF AN ASSHOLE TO VOTE FOR NIXON, YOUR DUMB VOTE WILL BE COUNTED––JUST LIKE ANYBODY ELSE!
More John Irving Quotes
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This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
JOHN IRVING -
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
JOHN IRVING -
Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
JOHN IRVING -
He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.
JOHN IRVING -
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
JOHN IRVING -
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING -
You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING -
… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
JOHN IRVING -
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.
JOHN IRVING -
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING -
But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING -
There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
JOHN IRVING -
I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.
JOHN IRVING -
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
JOHN IRVING -
I’ve always preferred writing in longhand. I’ve always written first drafts in longhand.
JOHN IRVING






