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
intellectual analysts old-fashioned
I'm old-fashioned, a storyteller. I'm not an analyst and I'm not an intellectual.
father firsts bears
The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings; the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels.
heart collaboration compromise
I'm not a movie person. They're collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.
growing-up doors long
...I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next door to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace.
home dying needs
Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually; and almost everyone needs to.
thinking today phrases
What a phrase that is: 'that explains everything!' I know better than to think anything 'explains everything' today.
wrestling tennis musical
Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
writing wrestling hard-work
Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.
childhood fancy grows
Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.
writing stories want
When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
thinking hymns funeral
I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
exhausting seventeen knows
It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
lovers
You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.
country thinking hopeful
I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I've seen in the country since John Kennedy.