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No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen…You shouldn’t have a baby if there’s no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.

John Irving

This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
JOHN IRVING

Centered Religion Self
There’s no reason you shouldn’t, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
JOHN IRVING

Aware Constantly Reason
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
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
… 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

Heart Normal Symtons
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
We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVING

Country Rewards Way
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
The gardener had a dread of small women; he’d always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.
JOHN IRVING

Dread Gardener Size
No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
JOHN IRVING

Chiefly Lived Mind Mine
I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.
JOHN IRVING

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

Art Hard Work Serious
THERE’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!
JOHN IRVING

Dumb Monkeys Voters
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
A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.
JOHN IRVING

Boiled Life Sentences
A writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
JOHN IRVING

Jobs Memories Writing

No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen…You shouldn’t have a baby if there’s no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.

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No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen…You shouldn’t have a baby if there’s no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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