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
christian easter believe
Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer." “If you don’t believe in Easter,” Owen Meany said. “Don’t kid yourself—Don’t call yourself a Christian.
kings maine england
Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.
life art fun
Life is serious but art is fun!
school study
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.
crazy giving people
Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.
wall writing diaries
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.
long enough caricatures
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
philosophical wrestling athlete
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.
cancer real reading
Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.
country years two
Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves--to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!
memories thinking monsters
Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
belief freedom-of-religion
When you legislate personal belief, you're in violation of freedom of religion.
safety viruses found
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
children book school
Grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying. When you’re no longer a child, and you no longer live at home, you don’t have to finish everything on your plate. One reward of leaving school is that you don’t have to finish books you don’t like.