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Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!

John Irving

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING

Art Hard Work Serious
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.
JOHN IRVING

Cancer Reading Real
Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
JOHN IRVING

Musical Tennis Wrestling
It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.
JOHN IRVING

Adults Resentment Teenagers
The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.
JOHN IRVING

Ability Burden Feels
The lie, of course, is more interesting.
JOHN IRVING

Courses Interesting Lying
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING

Condescend Inferiors People
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don’t have one. But we are a country – USA – that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.
JOHN IRVING

Country Religious Running
A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.
JOHN IRVING

Boiled Life Sentences
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

Adults Age Kids
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!
JOHN IRVING

Mean People Religious
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING

Scary Writing
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
The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.
JOHN IRVING

Love Reason Writing
I suppose I’m proudest of my novels for what’s imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
JOHN IRVING

Imagination Interesting Thinking
Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
JOHN IRVING

Memories Monsters Thinking

Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!

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Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!

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Popular Authors

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