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

John Irving

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

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

Imagine Remember Stories
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
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses
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
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
My brain is sending poison to my heart.
JOHN IRVING

Brain Heart Poison
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.
JOHN IRVING

Be Kind Bird Rhinos
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
Life,” Garp wrote, “is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.
JOHN IRVING

Ends Memories Nihilist
The lie, of course, is more interesting.
JOHN IRVING

Courses Interesting Lying
Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don’t mean that you can’t also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.
JOHN IRVING

Fun Hurt Mean Stories
I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
JOHN IRVING

Country Hopeful Thinking
The gardener had a dread of small women; he’d always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.
JOHN IRVING

Dread Gardener Size
You can’t learn everything you need to know legally.
JOHN IRVING

Feet Knows Needs

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

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

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