So, I don’t work in terms of real time. I don’t work in a timely fashion.
JOHN IRVINGO God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
More John Irving Quotes
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We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVING -
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING -
When writing a novel, I’m not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don’t know what it is.
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 -
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVING -
Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING -
A novel is a piece of architecture. It’s not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It’s a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.
JOHN IRVING -
Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
JOHN IRVING -
… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
People only ask questions when they’re ready to hear the answers.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
I’ve always been slow but I’m even slower now. I’m more into the waiting, or I guess I’m more patient about the waiting.
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 -
Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can’t even remember having met you
JOHN IRVING