There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
JOHN IRVINGWhen 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.
More John Irving Quotes
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But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING -
I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
JOHN IRVING -
There’s no reason you shouldn’t, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
JOHN IRVING -
Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.
JOHN IRVING -
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
JOHN IRVING -
Life is serious but art is fun!
JOHN IRVING -
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING -
Death, it seems,” Garp wrote, “does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
A part of adolescence is feelimg that there’s no one else around who’s enough like youself to understand you.
JOHN IRVING -
YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
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.
JOHN IRVING