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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

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
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
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

Beautiful Kids Men
I 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.
JOHN IRVING

Civilization Perception Years
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother’s hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
JOHN IRVING

Dark Mom Mother
It doesn’t really matter who said it – it’s so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
JOHN IRVING

Matter Said Something Writing
And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won’t forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
JOHN IRVING

Book Memories Tears
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
JOHN IRVING

Die Dies Everybody
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
JOHN IRVING

Stories Victim 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
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

Exercise Sex Sleep Writing
…every study of the gods, of everyone’s gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
JOHN IRVING

Innocent Study Vengeance
People only ask questions when they’re ready to hear the answers.
JOHN IRVING

Answers People Ready
You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING

Obsessed Obsession Psychology
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING

Cases Meany Owen World
So, I don’t work in terms of real time. I don’t work in a timely fashion.
JOHN IRVING

Fashion Real Term Work

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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