I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
JOHN IRVINGYour 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!
More John Irving Quotes
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You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I’m going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life
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Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
JOHN IRVING -
You can’t learn everything you need to know legally.
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Don’t forget this, too: Rumors aren’t interested in the unsensational story; rumors don’t care what’s true.
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Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too.
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We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
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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 -
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
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The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.
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.
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Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.
JOHN IRVING -
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person – you have to know the difference.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin – only four years older than I am – everything, or what little I could discover about him.
JOHN IRVING