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

John Irving

Don’t forget this, too: Rumors aren’t interested in the unsensational story; rumors don’t care what’s true.
JOHN IRVING

Care Rumor Stories
A writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
JOHN IRVING

Jobs Memories Writing
If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING

Moral Pride Sin
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
JOHN IRVING

Finished Process Product
It’s a no-win argument – that business of what we’re born with and what our environment does to us. And it’s a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
JOHN IRVING

Environment Growth Winning
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING

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

Obsessed Obsession Psychology
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
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

Fun Hurt Mean Stories
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

Another Day Religious
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
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
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

Love Reason Writing
They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
JOHN IRVING

Awkward Procedures Regret

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

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

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Popular Authors

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