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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

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

Exhausting Knows Seventeen
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
You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING

Obsessed Obsession Psychology
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

Finals Knowing Usually Voice
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
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVING

Anticipation Excitement Thrill
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don’t have one. But we are a country – USA – that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.
JOHN IRVING

Country Religious Running
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
JOHN IRVING

Lessons Moral
So, I don’t work in terms of real time. I don’t work in a timely fashion.
JOHN IRVING

Fashion Real Term Work
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person – you have to know the difference.
JOHN IRVING

Character Differences Important
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

Book People Procedure Way
There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.
JOHN IRVING

Mean People Suicide
I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them…they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
JOHN IRVING

Funeral Hymns Thinking
You’re nice,’ Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. ‘And you’re my oldest friend.’ But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
JOHN IRVING

Hands Nice Squeezing
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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