Half my life is an act of revision. John Irving More Quotes by John Irving More Quotes From 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 - or the equivalent of photographs in one's imagination of anyone's life. A whole life, I mean. I can picture her when she was much younger than I am - because there are always gestures and expressions that are ingrained, ageless. An old woman doesn't see herself as an old woman, and neither do I. I try to see her her whole life in her. There's something so moving about someone's whole life. John Irving expressionmeanmoving The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them. John Irving owen-meanytaxesway I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, what outrages them, what they applaud and find sympathetic in human beings and what they detest about human beings, too. They are writers of great emotional range. John Irving styleemotionalsilly We invent what we love and what we fear. John Irving psychologyfear Imagining something is better than remembering something. John Irving owen-meanyrememberphilosophy Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong? John Irving strongmissingwant My life is a reading list. John Irving listsreadinglife-is The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist. John Irving this-worlddoeworld If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves. John Irving caricaturesenoughlong …there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus. John Irving virusessafetyfound There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned. John Irving grandmotherfinalsbook It´s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know. And that's hard, ..., because you often feel like interfering -you want to be the one who makes the plans. John Irving would-bepeoplethinking Kids are beautiful, man. And they know much more than grownups think they know. Kids are just perfect people until grownups get their hands on them. John Irving beautifulmenkids I have no respect for the right-to-life position. But when you legislate personal belief, you're in violation of freedom of religion. The Catholic Church may espouse its opinion on abortion to the members of its congregation. But they are in violation of separation of church and state when they try to proselytize their abortion politics on people who are not Catholics. John Irving abortioncatholicpeople All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man. John Irving saidliarsmen I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin. John Irving actorsskinsthinking Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you! John Irving monstersmemoriesthinking We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them. John Irving perspectivesightorder Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar. John Irving falling-in-loveordinaryliars Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough. John Irving crazygivingpeople
