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
character interest situation
I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.
christmas home loss
Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.
writing matter said
It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
sympathy laughter people
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.
children believe church
I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.
mean writing atmosphere
I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.
writing stories victim
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
order sight perspective
We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
believe complicated novel
I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.
regret awkward procedures
They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
falling-in-love liars stories
Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.
jobs memories cities
The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.
writing way minutes
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
father real adventure
You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life