The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
JOHN IRVINGAs it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper – or in a hurry.
More John Irving Quotes
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In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING -
People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.
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 -
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
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 -
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
JOHN IRVING -
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING -
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING -
Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer’s irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn’t reading.
JOHN IRVING -
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
JOHN IRVING -
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING -
THERE’S NO MONKEY BUSINESS ABOUT THIS ELECTION,’ he told the voters. ‘IF YOU’RE ENOUGH OF AN ASSHOLE TO VOTE FOR NIXON, YOUR DUMB VOTE WILL BE COUNTED––JUST LIKE ANYBODY ELSE!
JOHN IRVING -
It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
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 -
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING