I'm old-fashioned, a storyteller. I'm not an analyst and I'm not an intellectual. — John Irving Copy Share Image
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something. — John Irving Copy Share Image
“It was from just a few sentences that a writer learned anything from another writer.” — John Irving Copy Share Image
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior. — John Irving Copy Share Image
I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand. — John Irving Copy Share Image
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that… — 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
There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long… — 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
Anybody can do research. The plotting of the novel, writing the ending before you write anything else, which I always do -… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write. — John Irving Copy Share Image
I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“The one critisism the author of Slaugherhouse-Five would make of the young writer was what he called a punctuation problem. Mr. Vonnegut… — John Irving Copy Share Image
You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and… — 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
“According to my mother, I was a fiction writer before I'd written any ficton, by wich she meant not only that I… — 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 have lots of notebooks around, because one great advantage of writing by hand-in addition to how much it slows you down-is… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I'm not typing. I write only by longhand. I've always written first drafts by hand and then once I was into a… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“When, if only for a moment, the novelist steps out of the creator's role, what roles are there for the novelist to… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable)… — 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
The book works better if I know everything I can about the ending. Not just what happens, but how it happens and… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never… — 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… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer —not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I'm a very old-fashioned novelist. I write 19th-century novels, where a lot of rules apply. — John Irving Copy Share Image
A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories. — John Irving Copy Share Image
The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. — John Irving Copy Share Image
“Garp discovered that when you are writing something, everything seems related to everything else.” — John Irving Copy Share Image
Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses. — 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
![“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 crossly. "LOOK AT THOSE WEIRDO TV MIRACLE-WORKERS--THEY'RE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC! BUT THE REAL MIRACLES AREN'T ANYTHING YOU CAN…” quote by John Irving](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/70e/john-irving-337_atheists_just-because-a-bunch-of-atheists-are-bet_31804.jpg)
