There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
JOHN IRVINGIn 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.
More John Irving Quotes
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Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
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No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
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What a phrase that is: ‘that explains everything!’ I know better than to think anything ‘explains everything’ today.
JOHN IRVING -
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING -
Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING -
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
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What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
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!
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Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
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Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
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I have a friend who says that reviewers are the tickbirds of the literary rhinoceros-but he is being kind. Tickbirds perform a valuable service to the rhino and the rhino hardly notices the birds.
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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 -
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
JOHN IRVING -
How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
JOHN IRVING