“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 either.”

—  John Irving

Interview in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (1988)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychi…" by John Irving?
John Irving photo
John Irving 97
American novelist and screenwriter 1942

Related quotes

W. Mark Felt photo

“Everybody is to know that he is a goddamn traitor and just watch him damned carefully.”

W. Mark Felt (1913–2008) Whistleblower who exposed the Watergate scandal

Richard Nixon to Alexander Haig (May 12, 1973)

Hans Frank photo

“I think that Hitler was abnormal in his sexual needs. That is, he needed too little from the opposite sex. He considered women as objects of beauty, and he often talked with affection about his own mother. I obtained the impression that he disliked his father, because he never mentioned him. But it is a bad thing if a man has too little Eros in him. It makes him insensitive, and probably leads to cruelty. Freud, Sigmund Freud, the last of the great German psychiatrists, who died in England, pointed out the relationship between frustrated love and cruelty. I believe it is what you psychiatrists term sadism. I'm convinced that a man who does not need the love of a woman, and thinks he can forgo it, or who does forgo it, can turn to cruelty and sadism as a substitute.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Leon Goldensohn, July 20, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

John Buchan photo

“You don't know old Charles as I know him. He's got into a queer set, and there's no knowing what mischief he's up to. He's perfectly capable of starting a revolution in Armenia or somewhere merely to see how it feels like to be a revolutionary. That's the damned thing about the artistic temperament.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 1 "Beginning of the Wild-Goose Chase"

Benjamin Zephaniah photo

“I have always loved playing around with words. I didn’t know it was called poetry. I was just an innocent kid messing around with words when an adult said ‘You’re a poet, be published or be damned’.”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

On the realization that he was a poet in “Interview with Benjamin Zephaniah” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/37/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-benjamin-zephaniah in Writers & Artists

Robert J. Sawyer photo

“And Canadians didn’t like guns, either—they had no Second Amendment, or whatever damned thing it was that made Americans think they could go around armed.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Flashforward

Source: Flashforward (1999), Chapter 9 (pp. 95-96)

Alicia Witt photo

“damn my intuition here it goes
wish i didn’t know the things I know
you're backing off from me
i saw it happening
the moment she came back to you”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

Fighting For Crumbs https://aliciawitt.bandcamp.com/track/fighting-for-crumbs
Lyrics, Live at Rockwood (2012)

“Well, damn it all, it's only sixpence, I know, but I suppose he has to begin somewhere.”

Horatio Bottomley (1860–1933) English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament

Robert Graves & Alan Hodge The Long Week-end (London, 1940), ch. 5, p. 67.
Of one of his office-boys who had been caught stealing a small postal order.

John Fante photo

“Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.”

John Fante book The Brotherhood of the Grape

Source: The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977)
Context: Nobody crossed him without a battle. He disliked almost everything, particularly his wife, his children, his neighbors, his church, his priest, his town, his state, his country, and the country from which he emigrated. Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the sun or the stars, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.

“Damn boudas. I tell him he's under siege and he goes to take a nap.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Related topics