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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

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

Scary Writing
I don’t begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.
JOHN IRVING

Finals Knowing Usually Voice
I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, “I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure.” It doesn’t bother me if people feel that way.
JOHN IRVING

Book People Procedure Way
Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don’t mean that you can’t also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.
JOHN IRVING

Fun Hurt Mean Stories
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
A part of adolescence is feelimg that there’s no one else around who’s enough like youself to understand you.
JOHN IRVING

Adolescence Enough Like
My brain is sending poison to my heart.
JOHN IRVING

Brain Heart Poison
They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
JOHN IRVING

Awkward Procedures Regret
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
JOHN IRVING

Behavior Humans Ruthless
But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING

Busy People Thinking
The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
JOHN IRVING

Architecture Crafts Writing
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING

Caricatures Enough Long
A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.
JOHN IRVING

Boiled Life Sentences
This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
JOHN IRVING

Centered Religion Self
Keep passing the open windows.
JOHN IRVING

Depression Encouraging Life
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

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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