I'm old-fashioned, a storyteller. I'm not an analyst and I'm not an intellectual. — John Irving Copy Share Image
And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any.… — John Irving Copy Share Image
It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an… — John Irving Copy Share Image
'The Fourth Hand' was a novel that came from twenty years of screenwriting concurrently with whatever novel I'm writing. — 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 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
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
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 don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to… — 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
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
And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the… — 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
Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Before I began The Cider House Rules, I thought I wanted to write about a father-son relationship that was closer, more conflicted,… — John Irving Copy Share Image
The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone… — 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
“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
“There’s nothing I need or want to know from the writers I admire that isn’t in their books. It’s better to read… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I sometimes think that what I do as a writer is make a kind of colouring book, where all the lines are… — 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
“You know, it's not only writers who have this problem, but writers really, really have this problem; for us, a so-called train… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever.” — John Irving Copy Share Image
Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel. — John Irving Copy Share Image
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“But comedy is ingrained. A writer doesn't choose to be comic. You can choose a plot, or not to have one. You… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. — 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
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 Copy Share Image
There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly. — John Irving Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex; I… — 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
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 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
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 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
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)
