My life is a reading list.
JOHN IRVINGWhen writing a novel, I’m not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don’t know what it is.
More John Irving Quotes
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What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
JOHN IRVING -
The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
JOHN IRVING -
Don’t forget this, too: Rumors aren’t interested in the unsensational story; rumors don’t care what’s true.
JOHN IRVING -
I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.
JOHN IRVING -
What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too.
JOHN IRVING -
Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president’s particular agenda – and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American.
JOHN IRVING -
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person – you have to know the difference.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING -
We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVING -
There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
JOHN IRVING -
YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.
JOHN IRVING -
Death, it seems,” Garp wrote, “does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.
JOHN IRVING -
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
JOHN IRVING -
You can’t learn everything you need to know legally.
JOHN IRVING






