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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

A novel is a piece of architecture. It’s not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It’s a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.
JOHN IRVING

Diaries Floor Wall Writing
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn’t terribly painful.
JOHN IRVING

Sunday Teenage Years
But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING

Busy People Thinking
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING

Caricatures Enough Long
It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don’t expect me to change.
JOHN IRVING

Faults Meany Owen Responsibility
A part of adolescence is feelimg that there’s no one else around who’s enough like youself to understand you.
JOHN IRVING

Adolescence Enough Like
Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING

Doe Memories Monsters
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
Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
JOHN IRVING

Decision Finals Unnecessarily
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
JOHN IRVING

Behavior Humans Ruthless
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
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
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
I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
JOHN IRVING

Adults Age Kids
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
JOHN IRVING

Lessons Moral
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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