What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too.
JOHN IRVINGYou 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.
More John Irving Quotes
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I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING -
Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING -
How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
JOHN IRVING -
I suppose I’m proudest of my novels for what’s imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
JOHN IRVING -
No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
JOHN IRVING -
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
JOHN IRVING -
We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVING -
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
JOHN IRVING -
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
JOHN IRVING -
I don’t begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.
JOHN IRVING -
My life is a reading list.
JOHN IRVING -
Keep passing the open windows.
JOHN IRVING -
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING -
The gardener had a dread of small women; he’d always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.
JOHN IRVING -
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