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 IRVINGWe permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
More John Irving Quotes
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I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
JOHN IRVING -
Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.
JOHN IRVING -
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING -
THERE’S NO MONKEY BUSINESS ABOUT THIS ELECTION,’ he told the voters. ‘IF YOU’RE ENOUGH OF AN ASSHOLE TO VOTE FOR NIXON, YOUR DUMB VOTE WILL BE COUNTED––JUST LIKE ANYBODY ELSE!
JOHN IRVING -
My brain is sending poison to my heart.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
It doesn’t really matter who said it – it’s so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
JOHN IRVING -
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
JOHN IRVING -
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING -
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
JOHN IRVING -
There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.
JOHN IRVING -
People only ask questions when they’re ready to hear the answers.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
JOHN IRVING -
It’s not right to hurt or deceive someone who’s already been hurt and deceived.
JOHN IRVING






