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This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.

John Irving

It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
JOHN IRVING

Exhausting Knows Seventeen
It’s not right to hurt or deceive someone who’s already been hurt and deceived.
JOHN IRVING

Deceived Deceiving Hurt
If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING

Moral Pride Sin
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses
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
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

Enough Smart Writing
No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
JOHN IRVING

Chiefly Lived Mind Mine
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
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
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.
JOHN IRVING

Death Dramatic Indulgent Waiting
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother’s hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
JOHN IRVING

Dark Mom Mother
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
JOHN IRVING

Believe Children Church
THERE’S NO MONKEY BUSINESS ABOUT THIS ELECTION,’ he told the voters. ‘IF YOU’RE ENOUGH OF AN ASSHOLE TO VOTE FOR NIXON, YOUR DUMB VOTE WILL BE COUNTED––JUST LIKE ANYBODY ELSE!
JOHN IRVING

Dumb Monkeys Voters
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
JOHN IRVING

Finished Process Product
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.
JOHN IRVING

Stories Want Writing
In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
JOHN IRVING

Memorable Thinking Trying

This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.

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This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.

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Popular Authors

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