black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING

Asking Giving Please
I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them…they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
JOHN IRVING

Funeral Hymns Thinking
I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.
JOHN IRVING

Next Novel Writing
We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVING

Country Rewards Way
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING

Scary Writing
It doesn’t really matter who said it – it’s so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
JOHN IRVING

Matter Said Something Writing
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

Love Reason Writing
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING

Caricatures Enough Long
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

Dumb Monkeys Voters
They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
JOHN IRVING

Awkward Procedures Regret
And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won’t forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
JOHN IRVING

Book Memories Tears
He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
JOHN IRVING

Coincidence Novel Young
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING

Condescend Inferiors People
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
If you asked me one day, I might say, “Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious.” If you asked me another day, I’d just say flat out, “No.”
JOHN IRVING

Another Day Religious
No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen…You shouldn’t have a baby if there’s no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.
JOHN IRVING

Baby Hands Moving

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Irving Quotes