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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don’t have one. But we are a country – USA – that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.

John Irving

You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING

Obsessed Obsession Psychology
No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin – only four years older than I am – everything, or what little I could discover about him.
JOHN IRVING

Cousin Father Years
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

Love People Wind
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
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
I’ve always preferred writing in longhand. I’ve always written first drafts in longhand.
JOHN IRVING

Firsts Writing Written
There’s no reason you shouldn’t, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
JOHN IRVING

Aware Constantly Reason
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
He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
JOHN IRVING

Optimism Quality Risk
YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.
JOHN IRVING

Anything Dead Remember Watched
They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other…. or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.
JOHN IRVING

Kind Thinking Together
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person – you have to know the difference.
JOHN IRVING

Character Differences Important
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
In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
JOHN IRVING

Memorable Thinking Trying
There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.
JOHN IRVING

Mean People Suicide
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

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don’t have one. But we are a country – USA – that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.

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If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don’t have one. But we are a country – USA – that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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