black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.

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

People Sound Trying
I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.
JOHN IRVING

Book Long Writing
Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Hatred Loneliness Self
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
…every study of the gods, of everyone’s gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
JOHN IRVING

Innocent Study Vengeance
There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
JOHN IRVING

Four Negotiation Years
The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face; he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he’d not yet seen.
JOHN IRVING

Hair Ocean Powerful
Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
JOHN IRVING

Musical Tennis Wrestling
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
…I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next door to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace.
JOHN IRVING

Doors Growing Long
I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
JOHN IRVING

Dying Finding Student Yourself
The lie, of course, is more interesting.
JOHN IRVING

Courses Interesting Lying
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

Funeral Hymns Thinking
You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING

Obsessed Obsession Psychology
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
Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
JOHN IRVING

Bears Practice Promise

I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Irving Quotes