You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We - Americans - permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it. John Irving More Quotes by John Irving More Quotes From John Irving Being wrong about important things is exhausting. John Irving exhausting important-things important Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies. John Irving childhood adults ambition So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother and someone’s older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them. John Irving brother mother dream You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one. John Irving simple house book Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough. John Irving crazy suicide sorry You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening. John Irving happenings live-your-life stills so my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her rose garden she did not want to appear underdressed. if the dresses got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. when my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, "what? and have those people at the cleaners what i was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?" from my grandmother i learned that logic is relative. John Irving party mother dirty It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly. John Irving resentment teenager adults Adolescence-is it the first time in life we discover that we have something terrible to hide from those who love us? John Irving terrible first-time firsts When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. John Irving notebook writing school Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda - and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American. John Irving agendas presidential blind I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting. John Irving patient waiting The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is. John Irving burden ability feels 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 smart enough writing In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice. John Irving treatment voice scene 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 novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had. John Irving writing two book It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended. John Irving easier stories mind I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student. John Irving finding-yourself dying students I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing. John Irving degrees writing people What was even more germane was my study of the history of religion. It was one of the few things in school I was fascinated by. John Irving fascinated study school
