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YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.

John Irving

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

Imagine Remember Stories
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
JOHN IRVING

Belief Freedom Religion Violation
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

Childhood Events Loss
A writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
JOHN IRVING

Jobs Memories Writing
It’s not right to hurt or deceive someone who’s already been hurt and deceived.
JOHN IRVING

Deceived Deceiving Hurt
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
JOHN IRVING

Children Moments Parent
You can’t say you’re going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We – Americans – permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
JOHN IRVING

Country Names Play
I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.
JOHN IRVING

Exercise Sex Sleep Writing
He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.
JOHN IRVING

Being Ignored Rivals Unmanned
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
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
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVING

Anticipation Excitement Thrill
I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
JOHN IRVING

Country Hopeful Thinking
No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
JOHN IRVING

Chiefly Lived Mind Mine

YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.

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YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Irving Quotes