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When writing a novel, I’m not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don’t know what it is.

John Irving

Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else’s religion practiced on us.
JOHN IRVING

Practice Religious Two
If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING

Moral Pride Sin
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
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.
JOHN IRVING

Minutes Way Writing
If you asked me one day, I might say, “Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious.” If you asked me another day, I’d just say flat out, “No.”
JOHN IRVING

Another Day Religious
I don’t begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.
JOHN IRVING

Finals Knowing Usually Voice
There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
JOHN IRVING

Four Negotiation Years
It’s a no-win argument – that business of what we’re born with and what our environment does to us. And it’s a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
JOHN IRVING

Environment Growth Winning
Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
JOHN IRVING

Bears Practice Promise
There’s no reason you shouldn’t, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
JOHN IRVING

Aware Constantly Reason
Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Hatred Loneliness Self
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
Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.
JOHN IRVING

Imagine Remember Stories
But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING

Busy People Thinking
My life is a reading list.
JOHN IRVING

Life Lists Reading
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap

When writing a novel, I’m not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don’t know what it is.

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When writing a novel, I’m not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don’t know what it is.

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Popular Authors

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