John Irving Quotes

There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.

John Irving

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Quotes to Explore

• 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.

  

  Venus Williams
  • Work
  • Understanding
  • Confidence

• 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.

  

  Nadia Comaneci
  • People
  • Work
  • Too Much

• Cobnuts have a fresher flavour than any other nut I know of and go very well with autumnal fruit and light cheeses.

  

  Yotam Ottolenghi
  • Know
  • Light
  • Fruit

• I'm not cool - quite the opposite. I'm a real geek.

  

  Rachel Miner
  • Real
  • Cool
  • Opposite

• 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.

  

  Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • Me
  • Wants
  • Heroic

• I like heels and make-up.

  

  Victoria Pendleton
  • Up
  • Like
  • Makeup

• 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.

  

  Gabriel Byrne
  • Important
  • Think
  • Religion

• 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.

  

  Kara Swisher
  • Writing
  • Pretty
  • Risk

• The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity.

  

  Carl Clinton Van Doren
  • Man
  • Sheep
  • Wolves

• The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.

  

  Quintilian
  • Mind
  • Nature
  • Gifts

• It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • Experience
  • Very
  • Vices

• 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.

  

  J. D. Vance
  • Good
  • Community
  • Learn

• Everything has a place and time.

  

  Kabir Bedi
  • Time
  • Place
  • Everything

• 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.

  

  A. S. Byatt
  • Writing
  • End
  • Puzzle

• 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.

  

  Hal Sparks
  • People
  • Time
  • Guilty

• Where there is humility, there is more success, and lasting success.

  

  Patrick Lencioni
  • Success
  • Humility
  • Where

• 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.

  

  Vernon Howard
  • Power
  • Hurt
  • Child

• 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.

  

  Dan Stevens
  • Up
  • School
  • Me

• One thing at a time, as in the days when I was building Joshua. If I had wanted to build all the boat at once, the enormity of the task would have crushed me. I had to put all I had into the hull alone, without thinking about the rest. It would follow . . . with the help of the gods. Sailing non-stop around the world is the same. I do not think anyone has the means of pulling it off—at the start.

  

  Bernard Moitessier
  • Help
  • Building
  • Gods

• Caution is the instinct of the weaker animal.

  

  Catharine Sedgwick
  • Animal
  • Weakness
  • Instinct

• There are two phone calls parents don't ever want to get from their children. No. 1 is, 'I'm in prison. Come fetch me.' And No. 2 is, 'I've written a novel... and it's set in your hometown.'

  

  Adriana Trigiani
  • Children
  • Parents

• In general, corruption tends to exist whenever governments have favors to extend, or something to sell.

  

  Alan Greenspan

• Sometimes when you finish a book, you don't know quite what you've got.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Book
  • Sometimes
  • Finish

• There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly.

  

  John Irving