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 IRVINGBeing reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
More John Irving Quotes
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They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other…. or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
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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.
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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.
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The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
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And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won’t forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
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The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.
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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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He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
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The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.
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Keep passing the open windows.
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A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.
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If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING -
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
JOHN IRVING