John Irving Quotes
There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
Quotes to Explore
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Understanding that being nervous, having doubts and lacking confidence are emotions that are human is how you deal with it. It is okay to feel that way... and then understanding that you can work through it.
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People assume a lot of things about gymnasts - that the girls work too hard, it's way too much for them, they are too young to work so hard.
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Cobnuts have a fresher flavour than any other nut I know of and go very well with autumnal fruit and light cheeses.
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I'm not cool - quite the opposite. I'm a real geek.
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One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.
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I like heels and make-up.
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I don't disrespect anybody who espouses a particular religion or belief - that is their own right to do that. But I think it's terribly important to look beyond the comfort that religion gives.
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I have found, writing a blog, that being non-opaque is necessary. You pretty much have to say what you know in much more firm terms or risk that the legions who always know more than you do will tell the story better.
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The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.
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The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
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It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
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I learned from my community how to shoot a gun, how to shoot it well. I learned how to make a damn good biscuit recipe. The trick, by the way, is frozen butter, not warm butter. But I didn't learn how to get ahead.
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Everything has a place and time.
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I have never been able to read Agatha Christie - the pleasure is purely in the puzzle, and the reader is toyed with by someone who didn't decide herself who the killer was until the end of the writing.
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People only have guilty pleasures when they crowbar pleasure down their throat all the time and then they reach for the brownies. Then you should feel guilty because you're killing your body and that's something to be guilty about.
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When you're young, you don't have much sense. You don't have any reasoning power. You don't have any ability to take a blow, an insult, a hurt in the right way. There is no way a child can do that. All a child can do is feel the pang of it, the heartache of it.
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At 13, in my first year of Tonbridge, I went up for the part of Macbeth. I was up against the 17- and 18-year-olds, but for some reason I got the part. It made me incredibly unpopular with my peers, but it was the English and drama teachers who stepped in to save me when others wanted me kicked out of the school.
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I've got the best shoe guy in the business.
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The animation of the canvas is one of the hardest problems of painting.
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If you don't like it, don't follow me, don't watch me, cause I'm not going anywhere.
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Midsummer Night was roasting hot. The shore, of red granite, glowed with the heat; the dark blood of the earth seemed to be rising from below. There was a sharp, unbearable smell of birds, of cod, of green decaying seaweed. Through the mist the huge ruddy sun loomed nearer and nearer. And in the sea, dark blood welled up to meet it - in bloated, rearing, huge white waves. Night. The mouth of the bay between two cliffs was like a window. A window shutting out curious eyes with a white shade-white woolly fog. And all that you could see was that behind it something red was happening. (The North)
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Robert turned to the man standing beside him. “Oliver,” he said, “how did you ever come to the conclusion that I was a worthwhile human being?” Oliver took off his glasses and cleaned them with a handkerchief. “What makes you think I did?
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We may play in a contemporary rock vein, use standard bebop themes, and many other things besides.
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There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.
