John Irving Quotes

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

John Irving

• Writing

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Quotes to Explore

• I don't know how old I was when I started writing books. But, I was born in 1931, and I wrote my first book in 1961.

  

  Ed Emberley
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Know

• I've had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I've had lots of guys call me up. I've gotten two or three commissions to write things. I've written lots of movie scores.

  

  Ornette Coleman
  • People
  • Up
  • Good

• Sometimes things in life take a few years to digest, and they find their way into the work later on. Sometimes I'm writing about things from eight years ago-they just took a long time to distill and come out in the appropriate way.

  

  Beck
  • Life
  • Time
  • Work

• I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.

  

  Randy Newman
  • Writing
  • Truth
  • Yourself

• I started submitting stories for publication when I was about 15, but it was many years before I sold anything. I don't make my living writing science fiction, so in that sense, I'm still not a pro.

  

  Ted Chiang
  • Writing
  • Science
  • Years

• There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Writing
  • Way
  • Acting

• When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Doing

• I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

  

  Vince Gill
  • Up
  • Good
  • Writing

• One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.

  

  Harrison Birtwistle
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Take

• I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.

  

  Vikram Rohit Shetty
  • Writing
  • Love
  • Army

• Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Writing
  • Way
  • Expressing

• People say, 'How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?' No - you just become a faster songwriter... In the old days, you'd be like, 'Oh I'm gonna work on this song for a few days.'

  

  Eddie Vedder Pearl Jam
  • People
  • World
  • Work

• I can ask for a £25,000 advance, but then you spend a year writing the book, and £25,000 is a loan against sales, and you can easily spend five years earning out. So that's £25,000 for six years.

  

  Mal Peet
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Year

• When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery.

  

  Calvin Trillin
  • Writing
  • You
  • Delivery

• There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

  

  J. Michael Straczynski
  • Writing
  • Funny
  • Sad

• I'm quite adept at writing two or sometimes even three stories at once. So if I get stuck on one story, I switch the next and let my subconscious work on unraveling any plot problems from another story.

  

  Zara Cox
  • Work
  • Writing
  • Problems

• My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I'm concerned, love is absolutely everything.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Life
  • Writing
  • Love Is

• Writing can be a very solitary profession, and when deadlines are looming, it's tempting to glue myself to my desk, but I try to make sure I get out a few times a month with friends just so I don't forget what it means to be social.

  

  Becca Fitzpatrick
  • Writing
  • Friends
  • Myself

• I'm a writer who simply can't know what I'm writing about until the writing lets me discover it. In a sense, my writing process embraces the gapped nature of my memory process, leaping across spaces that represent all I've lost and establishing fresh patterns within all that remains.

  

  Floyd Skloot
  • Writing
  • Nature
  • Lost

• I can write anywhere. I made up the names of the characters on a sick bag while I was on an airplane. I told this to a group of kids and a boy said, "Ah, no, that's disgusting." And I said, "Well, I hadn't used the sick bag."

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Up
  • Writing
  • Character

• I wrote a lot of 'A Time to Kill' at the State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., hiding in little committee rooms, killing time waiting for legislation to come to the floor.

  

  John Grisham
  • Time
  • Waiting

• If you ask me, I would love to see works like Sharat Chandra Chatterjee's 'Badi Didi,' Munshi Premchand's 'Nirmala,' and Phanishwar Nath Renu's 'Maila Anchal' come alive on small screen.

  

  Ashish Sharma
  • Small

• For years it never occurred to me to question the judgment of those in charge at the studio.

  

  Gene Tierney
  • Question

• I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

  

  John Irving
  • Writing