John Irving
John Irving
John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 March 1942
CountryUnited States of America
book school shoes
With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.
thinking imagination interesting
I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
eye past views
I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.
study vengeance innocent
...every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
memories past hair
Because who can describe that look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death?
love eye people
How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
opera soap life-is
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
hero trying alive
Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.
mother dirty party
so my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her rose garden she did not want to appear underdressed. if the dresses got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. when my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, "what? and have those people at the cleaners what i was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?" from my grandmother i learned that logic is relative.
thinking people would-be
It´s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know. And that's hard, ..., because you often feel like interfering -you want to be the one who makes the plans.
thinking-of-you children crazy
Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!
thinking trying outsiders
I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.
life sentences
A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.
ignorance writing long
There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.