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You 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 Irving

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

Four Negotiation Years
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
If you asked me one day, I might say, “Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious.” If you asked me another day, I’d just say flat out, “No.”
JOHN IRVING

Another Day Religious
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
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
JOHN IRVING

Stories Victim Writing
Life,” Garp wrote, “is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.
JOHN IRVING

Ends Memories Nihilist
There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.
JOHN IRVING

Mean People Suicide
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you’re going to be in this business, if you’re going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
JOHN IRVING

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

Scary Writing
The gardener had a dread of small women; he’d always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.
JOHN IRVING

Dread Gardener Size
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
Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
JOHN IRVING

Majority People Population
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn’t terribly painful.
JOHN IRVING

Sunday Teenage Years

You 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.

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You 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Irving Quotes