John Irving: Thing

John Irving is American novelist and screenwriter. Explore interesting quotes on thing.
John Irving: 194 quotes15 likes

“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!”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)

“You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life”

John Irving book The World According to Garp

Source: The World According to Garp

“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.”

John Irving

“How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

“Being wrong about important things is exhausting.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

“As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper – or in a hurry.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“[On his process for writing novels:] I can't imagine what the first sentence is, I can't imagine where I want the reader to enter the story, if I don't know where the reader is going to leave the story. So once I know what the last thing the reader hears is, I can work my way backward, like following a roadmap in reverse.”

John Irving

A modern novelist of Dickensian tradition, Spotlight, Russia Today, January 24, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ost0Gyl2V1I,

“I write repeatedly—against my will—of those things I fear most happening. Losing a loved one, losing a parent, losing a child. I'm in terror of losing a child. It's never happened to me, but I am clearly compelled to write about it over and over again, and in a way I think, psychologically at least, this says more about me autobiographically as a novelist than the fact that Danny Angel goes to the Iowa Writers Workshop and has Kurt Vonnegut as a teacher, which I also did.”

John Irving

The Best of The Sunday Edition, CBC.ca, CBC, Michael Enright, October 25, 2009, November 5, 2009 http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/sundayedition_20091026_22073.mp3,