The lie, of course, is more interesting.
JOHN IRVINGThe lie, of course, is more interesting.
JOHN IRVINGI 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 IRVINGHow we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
JOHN IRVINGNo one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
JOHN IRVINGI’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVINGI certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
JOHN IRVINGbut writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
JOHN IRVINGIt is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVINGYou cannot drive with your eyes in the rear-view mirror… But dignity is difficult to maintain. Stamina requires constant upkeep. Repetition is boring. And you pay for grace.
JOHN IRVINGPlot 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 IRVINGI never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.
JOHN IRVINGWatch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!
JOHN IRVINGIt doesn’t really matter who said it – it’s so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
JOHN IRVINGYou can’t say you’re going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We – Americans – permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
JOHN IRVINGHe had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
JOHN IRVINGNearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
JOHN IRVING