In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
JOHN IRVINGNearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
More John Irving Quotes
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I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
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Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president’s particular agenda – and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American.
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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.
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Life is an X-rated soap opera.
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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.
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You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING -
I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.
JOHN IRVING -
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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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 -
My life is a reading list.
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You’re nice,’ Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. ‘And you’re my oldest friend.’ But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
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It’s not right to hurt or deceive someone who’s already been hurt and deceived.
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If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
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If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING -
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING






