black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

As 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.

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

Energy Father Grandmother
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
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
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

Change More Patient Waiting
What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too.
JOHN IRVING

Abortion Choice Choices Freedom
I’ve always preferred writing in longhand. I’ve always written first drafts in longhand.
JOHN IRVING

Firsts Writing Written
You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING

Obsessed Obsession Psychology
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
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
JOHN IRVING

Lessons Moral
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses
We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVING

Country Rewards Way
In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
JOHN IRVING

Scene Treatment Voice
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

Cancer Reading Real
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

Diaries Floor Wall Writing
Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.
JOHN IRVING

Imagine Remember Stories

As 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

As 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Irving Quotes