I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
JOHN IRVINGI 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.
More John Irving Quotes
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Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
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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.
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Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.
JOHN IRVING -
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING -
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
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I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
JOHN IRVING -
He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
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Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING -
The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face; he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he’d not yet seen.
JOHN IRVING -
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
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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.
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…every study of the gods, of everyone’s gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
JOHN IRVING -
When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it – rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
JOHN IRVING -
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn’t terribly painful.
JOHN IRVING -
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING