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

• Previous
• Next

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

• Sound moral principle is the only sure evidence of strength, the only firm foundation of greatness and perpetuity. Where this is lacking, no man's character is strong; no nation's life can be lasting.

  

  Orson F. Whitney
  • Life
  • Character
  • Strong

• 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 thing that everyone remembers about 'Bambi' is that moment. 'The Lion King,' took it to quite an extreme because it was an action sequence: his father was killed in a wildebeest stampede - I related, because mine was, too.

  

  Nathan Lane
  • Father
  • Action
  • King

• 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

• I write about whatever turns up. Every single day, I'm sitting down for three to five hours in the evenings wrestling away and producing far too much verse.

  

  Felix Dennis
  • Up
  • Day
  • Single

• Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future.

  

  Octavio Paz
  • World
  • Nature
  • Future

• Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.

  

  Herbert Spencer
  • Liberty

• For me, modern technology has ruined romance and movies - nobody can run to the airplane gate anymore.

  

  Lorene Scafaria
  • Technology
  • Airplane

• When I made the leap from category romance to larger single-title books, I was encouraged to make the book 'big,' and suspense was allowed. Over the years, I've been able to write the kind of books I love, with a balance of suspense and romance. How lucky am I?

  

  Lisa Jackson
  • Book
  • Single
  • Balance

• You can learn to write. But what you write is something that depends on your taste and on your vision or whatever. Also, of course, the music I listened to inspired my idea of music. When people ask me "Where's your inspiration? Where does it come from?" I have no idea. Music is about music. Not about life and love.

  

  Nils Frahm
  • Life
  • Music
  • Inspiration

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

  

  John Irving