Latest John Irving Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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.

  John Irving

  Waiting, Patient

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• All the unimaginative assholes in the world who imagine that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because it was impossible from what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford that such a man would have had the experience to imagine such things - well, this denies the very thing that separates Shakespeare from almost every other writer in the world: an imagination that is untouchable and nonstop.

  John Irving

  Men, Imagination, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  John Irving

  Finding Yourself, Dying, Students

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.

  John Irving

  Voice, Scene, Treatment

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I've always been interested in miracles, or the miraculous of the unexplained. I don't scoff at what makes people believe or want to believe. I think I understand the tremendous attraction of the mysteries of the church to the same degree that I understand and appreciate the frustration people feel, especially believers, with the human rule-making arm of the church, with the not-miraculous part of the church - any church.

  John Irving

  Believe, Frustration, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  John Irving

  Burden, Ability, Feels

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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

  John Irving

  Smart, Writing, Enough

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.

  John Irving

  Book, Writing, Two

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The concept of writing a novel and not knowing where it's going - I don't know how to do that. Novels are plot- and character-driven, so if I don't know what becomes of people, how can I know where it should begin?

  John Irving

  Writing, Character, Knowing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The book works better if I know everything I can about the ending. Not just what happens, but how it happens and what the language is; not just the last sentence, but enough of the sentences surrounding that last sentence to know what the tone of voice is. I imagined it as something almost musical. Then you are writing toward something; you know the sound of your voice at the end of the story. That's how you want to sound in those final sentences: the degree that it is uplifting or not, the degree that it is melancholic or not.

  John Irving

  Uplifting, Book, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  John Irving

  Mind, Stories, Easier

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I'm not typing. I write only by longhand. I've always written first drafts by hand and then once I was into a second or third draft I wrote insert pages on a typewriter. But I got rid of all my typewriters about three or four novels ago and now I do everything by hand. I write by hand because it makes me go slow and going slow is what I like.

  John Irving

  Writing, Typewriters, Hands

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.

  John Irving

  Writing, People, Degrees

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student - and not a good one - and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved.

  John Irving

  Philosophical, Wrestling, Athlete

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May 1997.

• I have no respect for the right-to-life position, though I have every respect for an individual who says, "I could never have that procedure, I could never see a film or read a book about that procedure." It doesn't bother me if people feel that way.

  John Irving

  Book, People, Way

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May 1997.

• When you legislate personal belief, you're in violation of freedom of religion.

  John Irving

  Belief, Freedom Of Religion, Violation

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May 1997.

• Before I began The Cider House Rules, I thought I wanted to write about a father-son relationship that was closer, more conflicted, and ultimately more loving, than most. Then I began to think of a relationship between an old orphanage director and an unadoptable orphan - a kid who goes out into the world and fails and keeps coming back, so that the old guy ends up with someone he's got to keep.

  John Irving

  Father, Kids, Writing

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May/June 1997.

• I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

  John Irving

  Believe, Stories, Behavior

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May 1997.

• I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.

  John Irving

  Character, Interest, Situation

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May/June 1997.

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

  John Irving

  Community, Good Man, Manners

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May/June 1997.

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

  John Irving

  Writing, Novelists, Century

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May 1997.

• I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it.

  John Irving

  Believe, Complicated, Should

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May 1997.

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

  John Irving

  Children, Believe, Church

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May 1997.

• 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.

  John Irving

  School, Study, Fascinated

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May/June 1997.

• 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.

  John Irving

  Teenage, Sunday, Years

  Interview with Suzanne Herel, www.motherjones.com. May 1997.