John Irving Quotes

When writing a novel, I'm not smart enough to know how to foreshadow something if I don't know what it is.

I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.

I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.

The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.

It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended.

I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.

We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it - and reward it in all manner of ways.

If you feel so strongly about what's on television, don't have one.

I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply.

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.

I still believe in getting married in churches and baptizing children. I go through those motions.

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."

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.

I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.

I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write.

If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.

Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement, '" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.", Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)

The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you will believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist ei

WHAT I'M TELLING YOU IS, IF YOU WANT TO DO THINGS YOUR OWN WAY, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION - YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A LITTLE COURAGE.

Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic, " Richard told me. "And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious.

That's okay, " I said. "We're writers. We make things up.

As Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.' Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions.

We were in a phase, through television and the movies, of living only vicariously. Even faintly sordid silliness excited us if it put us in contact with love.

You can't possibly know that you're going to be a writer!" Miss Frost said. "It's not a career choice.

Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away.

A novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more complicated than it seems at the beginning.

...nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.

...the demands of writing and of real life are not always similar.

Ruth knew very well what the killer thought he had heard: he'd heard the sound of someone trying not to make a sound - that's what he'd heard.

At times, he admitted, he had been very happy in the apple business. He knew what Larch would have told him: that his happiness was not the point, or that it wasn't as important as his usefulness.

And what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence?

Men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casual

Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?

I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around.

I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.