The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.
JOHN IRVINGThe unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.
JOHN IRVINGOur memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVINGNo 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 IRVINGAll 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 IRVINGThe lie, of course, is more interesting.
JOHN IRVINGI 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 IRVINGDon’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.
JOHN IRVINGI’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVINGO God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVINGNo one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen…You shouldn’t have a baby if there’s no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.
JOHN IRVING…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVINGThe excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVINGThe gardener had a dread of small women; he’d always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.
JOHN IRVINGIf you feel strongly about people having abortions, don’t have one. But we are a country – USA – that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.
JOHN IRVINGA 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 IRVINGWhat a phrase that is: ‘that explains everything!’ I know better than to think anything ‘explains everything’ today.
JOHN IRVING