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
busy
The inshore lifeboat was very busy with 39 jobs, and the all-weather lifeboat had 11.
religious one-day sometimes
If you asked me one day, I might say, "Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious." If you asked me another day, I'd just say flat out, "No."
perseverance window passing
Keep passing the open windows.
life courage love-you
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.
coincidence young novel
He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
death grief loss
When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.
losing-control feels humiliating
If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital.
growth ends grows
You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.
moving mean expression
I try to see the whole woman,' Eddie said to Hannah. 'Of course I recognize that she's old, but there are photographs - or the equivalent of photographs in one's imagination of anyone's life. A whole life, I mean. I can picture her when she was much younger than I am - because there are always gestures and expressions that are ingrained, ageless. An old woman doesn't see herself as an old woman, and neither do I. I try to see her her whole life in her. There's something so moving about someone's whole life.
intellectual belief kind
Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual.
psychology obsession obsessed
You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
process finished ifs
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
writing giving cooking
If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.
writing crafts architecture
The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.