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but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

John Irving

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

Answers People Ready
My brain is sending poison to my heart.
JOHN IRVING

Brain Heart Poison
Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else’s religion practiced on us.
JOHN IRVING

Practice Religious Two
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
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
JOHN IRVING

Creative Maps 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
There’s nothing as scary as the future.
JOHN IRVING

Future Nothing Scary
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING

Condescend Inferiors People
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING

Caricatures Enough Long
No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin – only four years older than I am – everything, or what little I could discover about him.
JOHN IRVING

Cousin Father Years
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
They all settled into being the kind of friends when they heard from each other…. or when they occasionally got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another.
JOHN IRVING

Kind Thinking Together
I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.
JOHN IRVING

Next Novel Writing
There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
JOHN IRVING

Four Negotiation Years
You’re nice,’ Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. ‘And you’re my oldest friend.’ But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
JOHN IRVING

Hands Nice Squeezing
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses

but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

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but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

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Popular Authors

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