John Irving Quotes
Anybody can do research. The plotting of the novel, writing the ending before you write anything else, which I always do - I don't know that everybody can do that. That's the hard part.
Quotes to Explore
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I was always interested in the kind of history they didn't teach you in school.
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You can't win if you don't play as a unit.
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Most of Google's home technologies have failed to catch on in a major way.
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I was a very physical child... I was a tree-climber; I was a tomboy.
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I want babies. I think I'll be a great dad.
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The four walls of paper are like a prison because every idea wants to spring out in all directions - everything is connected with everything else, sometimes more than others.
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I watch vlogs on YouTube. I watch Jenna Marbles a lot - I think she's really funny - and a lady called Daily Grace.
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I started off singing in church as a child. The sound of voices coming together, that was my first moment of touching something outside of myself.
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My reading of philosophy and history is desultory; I know so much and yet so little.
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Those boos really motivate me to make something happen.
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Your subconscious's goal is to recreate unresolved childhood issues and then hopefully mend them.
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I don't trust Santa Barbara as far as I can spit. I am afraid that if I went back there, it's possible that I could be run through their system, their judicial system, and wind up in some county jail where I could be killed and I'm not gonna take that chance.
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One of my favourite exhibitions is called 'Do It,' which I co-curated with the artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier 21 years ago.
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I auditioned in Chicago for Juilliard and didn't get in. I was basically living in a back room of my parents' house, paying rent and not doing anything with my life. I'd like to say it was patriotic to join the Marines, but it was also that I was doing nothing honorable with my life and spending too much time at McDonald's.
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We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.
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You don't master your fear. You're not able to say, 'I'm not going to be scared.' But what you can do is say, 'OK, I'm very very scared, but I have to do this and this and this.'
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If I sit down to write a young-adult novel, then I'm going to write either to the punch-pulling expectation of what I can't do, or I'm going to go the other way and think about what can I sneak in to be 'down with the kids' - which would be excruciating.
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I am a Brazilian before I am an architect. I cannot separate the two.
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I always feel that if you're going to cover a song, you should make it your own and flip it on its head.
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Unfortunately, young Russian artists are in a difficult position today. Painting, like all other arts, rests on a continuity of experience. More than anything, young painters and sculptors need to know the works of their immediate elders. Such a continuity does not exist here to a sufficient degree in the visual arts.
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Very seldom do I write words and have somebody put the music to them. If I'm writing lyric and music at the same time, I usually finish the music rather quickly.
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My new favorite thing is to wake up in hotel rooms, and write on the hotel pads. Usually, it's nothing. I leave it in a hotel and get really embarrassed about the maid picking it up, wondering what in the hell I'm talking about.
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Anybody can do research. The plotting of the novel, writing the ending before you write anything else, which I always do - I don't know that everybody can do that. That's the hard part.
