Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
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.
More John Irving Quotes
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Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
JOHN IRVING -
All 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 IRVING -
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING -
I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I can go without it for a while, but then I need it.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
JOHN IRVING -
People only ask questions when they’re ready to hear the answers.
JOHN IRVING -
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.
JOHN IRVING -
A part of adolescence is feelimg that there’s no one else around who’s enough like youself to understand you.
JOHN IRVING -
I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
JOHN IRVING -
Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.
JOHN IRVING -
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
JOHN IRVING -
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING