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
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!
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.
long enough caricatures
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
kings maine england
Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.
doe moments enough
. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .
falling-in-love liars stories
Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.
writing way minutes
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
two special half
More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.
sound lessons imagine
This is a writer’s lesson: To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.
sympathy laughter people
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.
good-friend supportive ifs
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
writing stories victim
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
mean writing atmosphere
I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.
religious mean people
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean––make sure they know what they mean!