“JUST BECAUSE A BUNCH OF ATHEISTS ARE BETTER WRITERS THAN THE GUYS WHO WROTE THE BIBLE DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE THEM RIGHT!" [Owen… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there… — John Irving Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Bill is a fiction writer, but he writes in the first-person voice in a style that is tell-all confessional; in fact, his… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I'm old-fashioned, a storyteller. I'm not an analyst and I'm not an intellectual. — John Irving Copy Share Image
I don't read anything electronically. I don't write electronically, either - except e-mails to my family and friends. I write in longhand.… — John Irving Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I don't think I've had a very interesting life, and I feel that is a great liberation. That gives me great freedom… — John Irving Copy Share Image
If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook… — John Irving Copy Share Image
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior. — John Irving Copy Share Image
“Ruth Cole was a novelist; novelists are not at their best when they go off half-cocked. She believed that she would prepare… — John Irving Copy Share Image
When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story… — John Irving Copy Share Image
This is a writer’s lesson: To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all. — John Irving Copy Share Image
I don't begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“What would Miss Frost have thought of me? I wondered; I didn't mean my writing . What would she have thought of… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34,… — John Irving Copy Share Image
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… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“Garp discovered that when you are writing something, everything seems related to everything else.” — John Irving Copy Share Image
I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described. — John Irving Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station. — John Irving Copy Share Image
I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why?… — John Irving Copy Share Image
All the unimaginative assholes in the world who imagine that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because it was impossible from what we… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from… — John Irving Copy Share Image
… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life. — John Irving Copy Share Image
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean––make sure they know what they mean! — John Irving Copy Share Image
The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“God, I think I just hit a high E-flat - and I really held it!" Esmeralda said, after one of her more prolonged orgasms,… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“Nostalgia!" Miss Frost cried. "You´re nostalgic!" She repeated. "Just how old are you, William?" She asked. "Seventeen, " I told her. "Seventeen!" Miss Frost… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“JUST BECAUSE A BUNCH OF ATHEISTS ARE BETTER WRITERS THAN THE GUYS WHO WROTE THE BIBLE DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE THEM RIGHT!" [Owen Meany] said… — John Irving Copy Share Image
It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“Only the chicken-lover will understand me. He will give me a kindly look, maybe mildly desirous. His eyes will tell me: You might look… — John Irving Copy Share Image
You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone… — John Irving Copy Share Image
