black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

John Irving

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.
JOHN IRVING

Minutes Way Writing
When writing a novel, I’m not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don’t know what it is.
JOHN IRVING

Enough Smart Writing
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
JOHN IRVING

Exhausting Knows Seventeen
The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
JOHN IRVING

Architecture Crafts Writing
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
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
JOHN IRVING

Creative Maps Writing
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING

Scary Writing
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 is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING

Art Hard Work Serious
He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
JOHN IRVING

Coincidence Novel Young
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
JOHN IRVING

Stories Victim Writing
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
JOHN IRVING

Friend Good Meany Owen Supportive
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
JOHN IRVING

Lessons Moral
You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
JOHN IRVING

Beginning Ends Grows Growth
Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
JOHN IRVING

Decision Finals Unnecessarily

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Irving Quotes