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No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

John Irving

I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, “I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure.” It doesn’t bother me if people feel that way.
JOHN IRVING

Book People Procedure Way
A writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
JOHN IRVING

Jobs Memories Writing
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
JOHN IRVING

Believe Children Church
Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.
JOHN IRVING

Imagine Remember Stories
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
JOHN IRVING

Children Moments Parent
People only ask questions when they’re ready to hear the answers.
JOHN IRVING

Answers People Ready
You can’t learn everything you need to know legally.
JOHN IRVING

Feet Knows Needs
In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
JOHN IRVING

Memorable Thinking Trying
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
A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.
JOHN IRVING

Boiled Life Sentences
Life is serious but art is fun!
JOHN IRVING

Art Fun Life
You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I’m going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life
JOHN IRVING

Adventure Everybody Father Real
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

Imagination Interesting Thinking
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
You’re nice,’ Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. ‘And you’re my oldest friend.’ But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
JOHN IRVING

Hands Nice Squeezing
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

Hair Ocean Powerful

No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

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No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

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