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What a phrase that is: ‘that explains everything!’ I know better than to think anything ‘explains everything’ today.

John Irving

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
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING

Cases Meany Owen World
If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING

Moral Pride Sin
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
JOHN IRVING

Beginning Ends Grows Growth
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING

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

Asking Giving Please
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
JOHN IRVING

Die Dies Everybody
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
JOHN IRVING

Childhood Events Loss
You can’t say you’re going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We – Americans – permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
JOHN IRVING

Country Names Play
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
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 IRVING

Memories Monsters Thinking
Life is serious but art is fun!
JOHN IRVING

Art Fun Life
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
Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can’t even remember having met you
JOHN IRVING

Memorable Running Thinking

What a phrase that is: ‘that explains everything!’ I know better than to think anything ‘explains everything’ today.

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What a phrase that is: ‘that explains everything!’ I know better than to think anything ‘explains everything’ today.

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Popular Authors

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