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 IRVINGI still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
More John Irving Quotes
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The gardener had a dread of small women; he’d always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.
JOHN IRVING -
A writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
JOHN IRVING -
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING -
THERE’S NO MONKEY BUSINESS ABOUT THIS ELECTION,’ he told the voters. ‘IF YOU’RE ENOUGH OF AN ASSHOLE TO VOTE FOR NIXON, YOUR DUMB VOTE WILL BE COUNTED––JUST LIKE ANYBODY ELSE!
JOHN IRVING -
The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.
JOHN IRVING -
Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer’s irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn’t reading.
JOHN IRVING -
I’ve always preferred writing in longhand. I’ve always written first drafts in longhand.
JOHN IRVING -
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVING -
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
JOHN IRVING -
In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
JOHN IRVING -
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
JOHN IRVING -
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
JOHN IRVING -
I’ve always been slow but I’m even slower now. I’m more into the waiting, or I guess I’m more patient about the waiting.
JOHN IRVING