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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too.

John Irving

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
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
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
JOHN IRVING

Children Moments Parent
I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them…they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
JOHN IRVING

Funeral Hymns Thinking
My life is a reading list.
JOHN IRVING

Life Lists Reading
My brain is sending poison to my heart.
JOHN IRVING

Brain Heart Poison
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
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
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
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
JOHN IRVING

Behavior Humans Ruthless
You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
JOHN IRVING

Obsessed Obsession Psychology
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
Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING

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

Answers People Ready
No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen…You shouldn’t have a baby if there’s no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.
JOHN IRVING

Baby Hands Moving
In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
JOHN IRVING

Scene Treatment Voice

What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too.

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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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