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 IRVINGAnd when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won’t forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
More John Irving Quotes
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The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
JOHN IRVING -
…every study of the gods, of everyone’s gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
JOHN IRVING -
In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
JOHN IRVING -
I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
JOHN IRVING -
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVING -
Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can’t even remember having met you
JOHN IRVING -
There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.
JOHN IRVING -
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
JOHN IRVING -
No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
JOHN IRVING -
I’m not a movie person. They’re collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.
JOHN IRVING -
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING -
I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, “I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure.” It doesn’t bother me if people feel that way.
JOHN IRVING -
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
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