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
lonely loneliness heart
In our hearts... there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they’re foreigners - even in their native lands. In our hearts... there also abides a certain suspicion that such people need to feel set apart from their society. But people who initiate loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nor are they undeserving of our pity.
book people film
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.
dies
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
coincidence young novel
He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
winning growth doe
It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
kids writing thinking
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.
umpires surfing novelists
Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.
boys labels categories
My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!
desire
We are formed by what we desire
generosity habit good-habits
Good habits are worth being fanatical about.
coward looks appearance
Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.
life writing half
Half my life is an act of revision.
christian mother believe
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
world cases terminal
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases