You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVINGThere is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
More John Irving Quotes
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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.
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When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it – rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
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Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
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Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
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The main character and the most important character are not always the same person – you have to know the difference.
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They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
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He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.
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Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer’s irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn’t reading.
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You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
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Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
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If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
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In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
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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.
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Kids are beautiful, man. And they know much more than grownups think they know. Kids are just perfect people until grownups get their hands on them.
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A 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 IRVING