John Irving quotes - page 5

Logic is relative. (John Irving)
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. View quote
John Irving
Sorrow floats. View quote
John Irving
I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you. View quote
John Irving
When I feel like being a director, I write a novel. View quote
John Irving
If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a novel with the last sentence is a pretty plodding way to spend your life. View quote
John Irving
You know, people think you have to be dumb to skip rope for 45 minutes. No, you have to be able to imagine something else. While you're skipping rope, you have to be able to see something else. View quote
John Irving
So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion. View quote
John Irving
There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly. View quote
John Irving
With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes. View quote
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)
There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. View quote
John Irving
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with. View quote
John Irving
The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. View quote
John Irving
I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second. View quote
John Irving
My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons. View quote
John Irving
I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there. View quote
John Irving
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. View quote
John Irving
I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions. View quote
John Irving
I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station. View quote
John Irving
I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story. (John Irving)
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write. View quote
John Irving
I believe in plot, in development of character, in the effect of the passage of time, in a good story - better than something you might find in the newspaper. And I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it. View quote
John Irving
Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel. View quote
John Irving
When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. View quote
John Irving