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John Irving


American
March 2, 1942
Novelist
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You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.


John Irving
Tags: You Get Got
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I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.


John Irving
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I believe that, in any novel of mine, the principal objective is the construction of the whole.


John Irving
Tags: Any Believe Whole
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If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.


John Irving
Tags: Courage You Life
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I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.


John Irving
Tags: Out Know Will
I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.
John Irving
Of all the things you choose in life, you don't get to choose what your nightmares are. You don't pick them; they pick you.
John Irving
Tags: You Get Life
I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through.
John Irving
Tags: Out Really Right
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
Tags: Just Know He
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
John Irving
I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
John Irving
Anybody can do research. The plotting of the novel, writing the ending before you write anything else, which I always do - I don't know that everybody can do that. That's the hard part.
John Irving
Tags: You Always Know
I suppose I try to look for those things where the world turns on you. It's every automobile accident, every accident at a party, you're having a good time until suddenly you're not.
John Irving
Tags: Time Good You
No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin - only four years older than I am - everything, or what little I could discover about him.
John Irving
Tags: Family Me About
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs.
John Irving
Tags: Family Up Go