John Irving Quotes
I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
Quotes to Explore
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It's expected of novels that they should explain the world and create the illusion that things are ultimately logical and coherent. But that's not what I see around me. Often, events remain mysterious and unresolved, and our emotions reach no catharsis.
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We lived in Atlanta for a couple of years, and had a lot of fun, but my best work happens when I isolate myself. It's all about turning inward.
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I've been told I'm a little bit eccentric.
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It is important to be well read, at least a little bit.
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Of course, as consumers, we want cheap and good products; however, if these production processes are exceeding wastewater discharge standards and even causing heavy metal pollution, they will cause long-lasting damage to the ecological environment and public health.
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For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.
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The collusion of big business, big labor, and big government threaten the spirit of small business that makes America great.
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Tom Brokaw was never young.
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You should never do anything too much. If you only eat healthy food, that is too much. Success is balance - a banker with no time with his kids, he's not successful. If he doesn't have time to walk his kids to school, that is not success - that is a mistake.
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Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
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After I win a match, I celebrate it by having an ice cream.
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For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours.
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I always wanted to be a writer. Maybe, had I been brought up in another generation, I might have just gone into writing rather than medicine - which is not to say that I didn't also have a great attraction towards the idea of being a healer. Fortunately, I've been able to combine the two in ways I could never possibly have imagined.
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The progress of India is the destiny of one-sixth of humanity. And it will also mean a world more confident of its prosperity and more secure about its future.
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Without understanding yourself, what is the use of trying to understand the world?
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If money was being invented now, it wouldn't be designed to look like cash or credit cards. It would look more like Bitcoin.
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I have always thought that writers come with any variety of attributes. Some are capable and some aren't.
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In nerve-free multicellular organisms, the relationships of the cells to each other can only be of a chemical nature. In multicellular organisms with nerve systems, the nerve cells only represent cells like any others, but they have extensions suited to the purpose which they serve, namely the nerves.
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For me he's just a hoax. It's empty. It's not interesting. It's dead. Citizen Kane, which I have a copy of - is all the critics' darling, always at the top of every poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances are worthless. The amount of respect that movie's got is absolutely unbelievable.
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Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved object: it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart; it aims at its own completeness.
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In the final analysis, terror is also another proof of the fact that the superpower is not really a superpower. It was vulnerable.
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Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
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There is of course a dark side to panto because there are always baddies and you can't have a baddie without a dark side. But most of the time the baddies become good.
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I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
