It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived. John Irving More Quotes by John Irving More Quotes From John Irving I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey. John Irving atmospherewritingmean It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need ... rules. John Irving good-manmenneeds Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. John Irving victimstorieswriting The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything. John Irving minuteswritingway Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home. John Irving christmaslosshome Life is serious but art is fun! John Irving funlifeart It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something. John Irving mattersaidwriting The history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories. John Irving citiesjobsmemories Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean - make sure they know what they mean! John Irving religiousmeanpeople Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England. John Irving cidermainekings The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. John Irving craftsarchitecturewriting This is a writer’s lesson: To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all. John Irving imaginelessonssound He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored. John Irving being-ignoredrivalsignored All the unimaginative assholes in the world who imagine that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because it was impossible from what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford that such a man would have had the experience to imagine such things - well, this denies the very thing that separates Shakespeare from almost every other writer in the world: an imagination that is untouchable and nonstop. John Irving imaginationmenworld I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings. John Irving perceptioncivilizationyears I'm not typing. I write only by longhand. I've always written first drafts by hand and then once I was into a second or third draft I wrote insert pages on a typewriter. But I got rid of all my typewriters about three or four novels ago and now I do everything by hand. I write by hand because it makes me go slow and going slow is what I like. John Irving typewriterswritinghands You can't learn everything you need to know legally. John Irving feetknowsneeds There's nothing as scary as the future. John Irving scary People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it. John Irving soundtryingpeople I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand. John Irving writtenwritingfirsts
