… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
JOHN IRVINGNearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
More John Irving Quotes
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Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING -
You can’t say you’re going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We – Americans – permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
JOHN IRVING -
Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
JOHN IRVING -
I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
JOHN IRVING -
Don’t forget this, too: Rumors aren’t interested in the unsensational story; rumors don’t care what’s true.
JOHN IRVING -
The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it’s not work for me.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
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 -
He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
There is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old.
JOHN IRVING -
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases
JOHN IRVING -
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING -
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
JOHN IRVING -
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