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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’m not a movie person. They’re collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.
JOHN IRVING

Collaboration Compromise Heart
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don’t have one. But we are a country – USA – that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.
JOHN IRVING

Country Religious Running
It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
JOHN IRVING

Adults Resentment Teenagers
Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
JOHN IRVING

Memories Monsters Thinking
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
Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Hatred Loneliness Self
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING

Caricatures Enough Long
…every study of the gods, of everyone’s gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
JOHN IRVING

Innocent Study Vengeance
Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING

Doe Memories Monsters
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
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
Life,” Garp wrote, “is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.
JOHN IRVING

Ends Memories Nihilist
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING

Nervous Not Afraid People
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING

Cases Meany Owen World
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING

Art Hard Work Serious
So, I don’t work in terms of real time. I don’t work in a timely fashion.
JOHN IRVING

Fashion Real Term Work

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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