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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.

John Irving

People only ask questions when they’re ready to hear the answers.
JOHN IRVING

Answers People Ready
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVING

Anticipation Excitement Thrill
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses
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
My brain is sending poison to my heart.
JOHN IRVING

Brain Heart Poison
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
But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING

Busy People Thinking
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING

Nervous Not Afraid People
In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
JOHN IRVING

Energy Father Grandmother
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
I’m not a movie person. They’re collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.
JOHN IRVING

Collaboration Compromise Heart
I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.
JOHN IRVING

Civilization Perception Years
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
I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, “I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure.” It doesn’t bother me if people feel that way.
JOHN IRVING

Book People Procedure Way
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
I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.
JOHN IRVING

Book Long Writing

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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