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 IRVINGRituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
More John Irving Quotes
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Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
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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.
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You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
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We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
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How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
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The lie, of course, is more interesting.
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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.
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I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
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Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
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Death, it seems,” Garp wrote, “does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.
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Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
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but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
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There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
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Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can’t even remember having met you
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…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING