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Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.

John Irving

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
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

Eye Mirrors Repetition Views
I’ve always been slow but I’m even slower now. I’m more into the waiting, or I guess I’m more patient about the waiting.
JOHN IRVING

Change More Patient Waiting
Keep passing the open windows.
JOHN IRVING

Depression Encouraging Life
…every study of the gods, of everyone’s gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
JOHN IRVING

Innocent Study Vengeance
In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
JOHN IRVING

Memorable Thinking Trying
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
And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won’t forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
JOHN IRVING

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

Answers People Ready
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person – you have to know the difference.
JOHN IRVING

Character Differences Important
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
YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.
JOHN IRVING

Anything Dead Remember Watched
When writing a novel, I’m not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don’t know what it is.
JOHN IRVING

Enough Smart Writing
The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.
JOHN IRVING

Ability Burden Feels
It’s a no-win argument – that business of what we’re born with and what our environment does to us. And it’s a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
JOHN IRVING

Environment Growth Winning

Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.

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Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.

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