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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

You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
JOHN IRVING

Beginning Ends Grows Growth
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
There’s no reason you shouldn’t, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
JOHN IRVING

Aware Constantly Reason
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person – you have to know the difference.
JOHN IRVING

Character Differences Important
You don’t want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.
JOHN IRVING

Character Giving People
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
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING

Nervous Not Afraid People
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
JOHN IRVING

Belief Freedom Religion Violation
The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.
JOHN IRVING

Husband Oxygen Thinking
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING

Cases Meany Owen World
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
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
JOHN IRVING

Exhausting Knows Seventeen
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
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
A novel is a piece of architecture. It’s not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It’s a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.
JOHN IRVING

Diaries Floor Wall Writing

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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