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
five lived people
I lived five years in the Midwest, and I loved it. The people were so nice. The people were so open.
imagined novels proudest suppose
I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them,
existed orphanages orphans
Do you really want to go back to those times when orphanages existed and when many orphans were not adopted?
philosophical wrestling athlete
Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student - and not a good one - and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved.
belief freedom-of-religion
When you legislate personal belief, you're in violation of freedom of religion.
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!
school study
What was even more germane was my study of the history of religion. It was one of the few things in school I was fascinated by.
world doe this-world
The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
community good-man manners
I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.
character interest situation
I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.
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.