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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

You don’t want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.
JOHN IRVING

Character Giving People
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING

Art Hard Work Serious
It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don’t expect me to change.
JOHN IRVING

Faults Meany Owen Responsibility
… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
JOHN IRVING

Heart Normal Symtons
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 IRVING

Adults Age Kids
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Combat Comforting Loneliness
You’re nice,’ Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. ‘And you’re my oldest friend.’ But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
JOHN IRVING

Hands Nice Squeezing
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

Cancer Reading Real
A part of adolescence is feelimg that there’s no one else around who’s enough like youself to understand you.
JOHN IRVING

Adolescence Enough Like
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.
JOHN IRVING

Activity Bad Temper
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
JOHN IRVING

Die Dies Everybody
There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.
JOHN IRVING

Mean People Suicide
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother’s hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
JOHN IRVING

Dark Mom Mother
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person – you have to know the difference.
JOHN IRVING

Character Differences Important
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
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

Majority People Population

Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

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Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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