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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

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

Sunday Teenage Years
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
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

Energy Father Grandmother
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING

Art Hard Work Serious
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
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
JOHN IRVING

Lessons Moral
There’s nothing as scary as the future.
JOHN IRVING

Future Nothing Scary
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Combat Comforting Loneliness
This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
JOHN IRVING

Centered Religion Self
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING

Caricatures Enough Long
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
JOHN IRVING

Finished Process Product
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
JOHN IRVING

Friend Good Meany Owen Supportive
People only ask questions when they’re ready to hear the answers.
JOHN IRVING

Answers People Ready
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses
They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
JOHN IRVING

Awkward Procedures Regret
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING

Scary Writing

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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