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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

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.
JOHN IRVING

Sunday Teenage Years
My life is a reading list.
JOHN IRVING

Life Lists Reading
Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING

Doe Memories Monsters
I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.
JOHN IRVING

Next Novel Writing
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
JOHN IRVING

Die Dies Everybody
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING

Caricatures Enough Long
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Combat Comforting Loneliness
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
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING

Nervous Not Afraid People
Keep passing the open windows.
JOHN IRVING

Depression Encouraging Life
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
We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVING

Country Rewards Way
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
JOHN IRVING

Lessons Moral
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses
All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let’s just leave them be. Don’t judge them. You are not superior to them – don’t put them down.
JOHN IRVING

Judging Superiors Tolerance
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

Cousin Father Years

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.

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