…every study of the gods, of everyone’s gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
JOHN IRVINGIt’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.
More John Irving Quotes
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No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
JOHN IRVING -
There’s no reason you shouldn’t, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
JOHN IRVING -
But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING -
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother’s hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
JOHN IRVING -
They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other…. or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.
JOHN IRVING -
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
JOHN IRVING -
A writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
JOHN IRVING -
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING -
No 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 are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.
JOHN IRVING -
The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
JOHN IRVING -
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
JOHN IRVING -
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING