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

John Irving

When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it – rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
JOHN IRVING

Stories Want Writing
A writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
JOHN IRVING

Jobs Memories Writing
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.
JOHN IRVING

Minutes Way Writing
There’s nothing as scary as the future.
JOHN IRVING

Future Nothing Scary
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
Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
JOHN IRVING

Majority People Population
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Combat Comforting Loneliness
I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.
JOHN IRVING

Exercise Sex Sleep Writing
Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.
JOHN IRVING

Alive Hero Trying
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

Collaboration Compromise Heart
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

Ability Burden Feels
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
Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.
JOHN IRVING

Imagine Remember Stories
All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let’s just leave them be. Don’t judge them. You are not superior to them – don’t put them down.
JOHN IRVING

Judging Superiors Tolerance
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
JOHN IRVING

Children Moments Parent
Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
JOHN IRVING

Musical Tennis Wrestling

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

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

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