Life Quotes by John Irving

Half my life is an act of revision.

— John Irving

My life is a reading list.

— John Irving

Life is serious but art is fun!

— John Irving

Life is an X-rated soap opera.

— John Irving

“don't worry - so what if there is no life after death? There is life after Garp, believe me.”

— John Irving

“living in a world where nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.” I”

— John Irving

My life as a writer consists of 1/8 talent and 7/8 discipline.

— John Irving

Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!

— John Irving

If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

— John Irving

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

— John Irving

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.

— John Irving

“I you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”

— John Irving

Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the…

— John Irving

“There is no Purgatory-that's a catholic invention. There's life on earth, There's heaven-and there's hell”

— 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…

— John Irving

“Those who plead for the lives of the unborn should consider the lives of the living. ...the unborn are not as wretched…

— John Irving

The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings; the second was that human…

— 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…

— John Irving

“For a terrible time of life a teen-ager deceives himself; he believes he can trick the world. He believes he is invulnerable.…

— John Irving

You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing…

— John Irving

All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was…

— John Irving

I want to go on being a student," I told him. "I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader," I…

— John Irving

I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one…

— John Irving

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…

— John Irving

“IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT- IT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT. IF YOU'RE…

— John Irving

Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to…

— John Irving

If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death…

— John Irving

Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my…

— John Irving

“Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue…

— John Irving

I try to see the whole woman,' Eddie said to Hannah. 'Of course I recognize that she's old, but there are photographs…

— John Irving

“That was when Angel Wells became a fiction writer, whether he knew it or not. That's when he learned how to make…

— John Irving

“Just accept as a fact that everyone of any emotional importance to you is related to everyone else of any emotional importance…

— John Irving

A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

— John Irving

Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.

— John Irving

“Rural life in the winter months was rugged: snow-blurred and alcohol-fueled, violent and fast.”

— John Irving

“...the demands of writing and of real life are not always similar.”

— John Irving

Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.

— John Irving

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more…

— John Irving

More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have…

— John Irving

You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can…

— John Irving