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
began great helped hundred models novel novels writer
'Great Expectations' was an important novel in my adolescence. It was very much one of those emblematic novels that made me wish I could write like that. It helped that my models as a writer were dead over a hundred years before I began to write.
accidents believe clear explore mapped mere necessary novel recognize route
I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions.
five lived people
I lived five years in the Midwest, and I loved it. The people were so nice. The people were so open.
novels people physical
I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.
love
When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed.
empty humbling novel page time written
One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are.
existed orphanages orphans
Do you really want to go back to those times when orphanages existed and when many orphans were not adopted?
imagined novels proudest suppose
I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them,
age career creative environment legitimate principal pursuit second
My principal creative pursuit is so solitary, that to be my age and have a legitimate second career in a collaborative environment is a gratification I never expected,
busy
The inshore lifeboat was very busy with 39 jobs, and the all-weather lifeboat had 11.
book kids responsibility
It's magical thinking to imagine that the reason unspeakable things are being perpetrated by younger and younger people is that they've fallen under the influence of seductive, lascivious, prurient, and violent material in books, films, television. A great deal of this type of censorship has to do with absolving parents of responsibility - parents who just plop their kids in front of the television and leave them there hour upon hour.
country play names
You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We [Americans] permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
believe wrestling would-be
I'm not at all contemporary, not even modern, and the fact that I would be so quaintly attracted to that wrestling rule makes me, I suppose, seem all the more old-fashioned. I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.
believe character plot
I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.