Top 341 Quotes & Sayings by John Irving - Page 6

Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.

What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.

A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax.

Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either

I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.

I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.

For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.

When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.

I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.

The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.

It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended.

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.

Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.

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.

I always begin with a character or characters, and then try to think up as much action for them as possible.

So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.

You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister; you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.

I'm not at all contemporary, not even modern, and the fact that I would be so quaintly attracted to that wrestling rule makes me, I suppose, seem all the more old-fashioned. I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.

I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.

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."

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.

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.

I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, "I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure." It doesn't bother me if people feel that way.

I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen.

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.

I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.

We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it - and reward it in all manner of ways.

Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student - and not a good one - and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved.

I always know more about the ending, even the aftermath to the ending, than I know about the beginning. And so there's a construction that works from back to front.

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.

When you legislate personal belief, you're in violation of freedom of religion.

If you feel so strongly about what's on television, don't have one.

I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write.

I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.

Before I began The Cider House Rules, I thought I wanted to write about a father-son relationship that was closer, more conflicted, and ultimately more loving, than most. Then I began to think of a relationship between an old orphanage director and an unadoptable orphan - a kid who goes out into the world and fails and keeps coming back, so that the old guy ends up with someone he's got to keep.

I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.

What was even more germane was my study of the history of religion. It was one of the few things in school I was fascinated by.

It seems to me that a great deal of this type of censorship has to do with absolving parents of responsibility - parents who just plop their kids in front of the television and leave them there hour upon hour.