John Irving Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

  John Irving

  Writing, Crafts, Architecture

• Half my life is an act of revision.

  John Irving

  Life, Writing, Half

  John Irving (2016). “Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.14, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

• It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.

  John Irving

  Writing, Matter, Said

  John Irving (2012). “In One Person: A Novel”, p.144, Simon and Schuster

• A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.

  John Irving

  Jobs, Memories, Writing

  John Irving (1978). “The world according to Garp”, Pocket

• Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

  John Irving

  Writing, Stories, Victim

  "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (Eighth Series)". Book edited by George Plimpton, 1988.

• I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.

  John Irving

  Writing, Mean, Atmosphere

  "Wrestling Life Into Fable". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 3, 2005.

• I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.

  John Irving

  Book, Writing, Long

• If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.

  John Irving

  Writing, Giving, Cooking

  John Irving (1978). “The world according to Garp”, Pocket

• I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why? Because wrestling requires even more dedication than writing because wrestling represents the most difficult and rewarding objective that I have ever dedicated myself to; because wrestling and wrestling coaches are among the most disciplined and self-sacrificing people I have ever known.

  John Irving

  Art, Writing, Wrestling

• The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.

  John Irving

  Writing, Way, Minutes

• Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.

  John Irving

  Hurt, Fun, Mean

• The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

  John Irving

  Love, Writing, Reason

• Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.

  John Irving

  Writing, Creative, Maps

• 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.

  John Irving

  Birthday, Sports, Writing

• I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

  John Irving

  Writing, Firsts, Written

  "Novelist John Irving Plays Not My Job". "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" with Peter Sagal, www.npr.org. February 22, 2013.

• It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support; they want someone to say, "Good job."

  John Irving

  Jobs, Writing, Giving

• So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.

  John Irving

  Real, Book, Writing

• You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.

  John Irving

  Writing, Self, Stupidity

• 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

• And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.

  John Irving

  Taken, Responsibility, Writing

• A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.

  John Irving

  Wall, Writing, Diaries

• When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.

  John Irving

  Writing, Stories, Want

• Along the (writing) way accidents happen, detours get taken... But these are not "divine" accidents; I don't believe in those. I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. The more you know about a book, the freer you can be to fool around. The less you know, the tighter you get.

  John Irving

  Believe, Book, Taken

• 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

• I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write.

  John Irving

  Believe, Writing, Should

  "Why novelist John Irving's latest protagonist is a fiction writer". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. November 3, 2015.

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