A Quote by John Irving

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

Quote Topics

Architecture Building Diaries Floors Novel Piece Random Walls Work

Quote Author

John Irving
American - Novelist
Born: March 2, 1942

I won't eat in a restaurant with filthy bathrooms. This isn't a hard call. They let you see the bathrooms. If the restaurant can't be bothered to replace the puck in the urinal or keep the toilets and floors clean, then just imagine what their refrigeration and work spaces look like.

Anthony Bourdain

As a reader I don't distinguish between confessional and non-confessional work. After all, how do we even know that certain "I" poems are confessional? It's a tricky business, this correlating of the speaker and the poet.

Matthea Harvey

We are a nation that does not build walls. We do not believe in building walls. And that defines who we are. We are South Africans, and we do not subscribe to the building of walls.

Cyril Ramaphosa

My dad, he's definitely one of greatest writers of his generation. There is no question about it. When you are that good, when work is that good, you have to appreciate every aspect of it. It's the architecture of it, it's like looking at a Frank Lloyd Wright building or a Lautner building, it's master craftsmanship. Every aspect of it intertwines in a perfectly harmonious way. That's what architecture is at its best and the architecture of my father's music is on that level.

Sean Lennon

Walls don't work. ... Instead of building walls to create security, we need to build bridges.

James G. Stavridis

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

John Irving

Concepts differentiate architecture from mere building...A bicycle shed with a concept is architecture; a cathedral without one is just a building.

Bernard Tschumi

Well, I work out three to four times a week, in a gym, which - thank God - is right in my building here in New York City. It's in the Reebok building, and it's got every kind of weightlifting equipment you can imagine, spread out over six floors, plus basketball courts and everything else. And because it's right in the building, there's no excuse.

Regis Philbin

In the 20th century, we built a lot of walls - we endlessly tried to build walls between us and people we perceived, correctly or incorrect, as our enemies. In the 21st century, because of the advent of networks, the free movement of goods and people across the globe, we need to build security by building bridges instead of building walls.

James G. Stavridis

A particular piece of music attaches itself to the piece I'm writing, and there is nothing else I can listen to. Every day I return to the same space to write, the music providing both the walls and the pictures on the walls.

Aleksandar Hemon

Building walls isn't going to work in the long run. Some people are happy with the wall in Israel, but somebody will get a weapon someday and knock it over or something. Walls aren't the answer between countries, though.

Arlo Guthrie

The building is absolutely stunning. It is a magnificent and important piece of architecture that contributes greatly to the cultural landscape of Washington. It is one the best designed buildings in D.C. in the last decade.

Zelda Fichandler

One of the problems with a lot of "confessional" writing is that it starts and stops with the confessional and doesn't really tie the "I" into a "we" at all. I'm still surprised at how mad critics get at that kind of confessional writing.