black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

John Irving

I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.
JOHN IRVING

Next Novel Writing
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
JOHN IRVING

Friend Good Meany Owen Supportive
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
It doesn’t really matter who said it – it’s so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
JOHN IRVING

Matter Said Something Writing
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
JOHN IRVING

Exhausting Knows Seventeen
He 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 IRVING

Optimism Quality Risk
When you legislate personal belief, you’re in violation of freedom of religion.
JOHN IRVING

Belief Freedom Religion Violation
Don’t forget this, too: Rumors aren’t interested in the unsensational story; rumors don’t care what’s true.
JOHN IRVING

Care Rumor Stories
The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
JOHN IRVING

Architecture Crafts Writing
I have a friend who says that reviewers are the tickbirds of the literary rhinoceros-but he is being kind. Tickbirds perform a valuable service to the rhino and the rhino hardly notices the birds.
JOHN IRVING

Be Kind Bird Rhinos
No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin – only four years older than I am – everything, or what little I could discover about him.
JOHN IRVING

Cousin Father Years
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
JOHN IRVING

Believe Children Church
The lie, of course, is more interesting.
JOHN IRVING

Courses Interesting Lying
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!
JOHN IRVING

Mean People Religious
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
JOHN IRVING

Die Dies Everybody
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING

Found Safety Viruses

You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Irving Quotes