John Irving Quotes
You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one.
Quotes to Explore
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I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
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The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral - whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love? I want to foster eulogy virtues when I'm in a yoga class or meditation session or any spiritual gathering. Especially if I'm lying in corpse pose. It just makes sense.
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Every writer I know got their start in a library somewhere. We read a book, and we thought, 'I want to do that.'
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When the depths are upheld by the Holy Spirit, then the reaction is Christian.
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There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
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We need to consider nominations as thoroughly and carefully as the American people deserve. No one is entitled to a free pass to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
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My failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent.
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I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.
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I certainly feel that the time is not far distant when a knowledge of the principles of diet will be an essential part of one's education. Then mankind will eat to live, be able to do better mental and physical work and disease will be less frequent.
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Yesterday morning I amused myself with an exercise of a talent I once possessed, but have so neglected that my performance might almost be called an experiment. I cut out a dress for one of the women.
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Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
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When we show up in a city, we ask, 'Where's the best restaurant? What's the best beer?' You start doing that, and you get exposed to a lot of great stuff.
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Unending was the stream, unending the misery, unending the sorrow.
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Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.
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I don't talk about political matters. That's not my department.
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I always think that I love doing what I'm doing at the moment. The past is over. I can't go play one of those characters again. But I can play this and I can continue to grow in what I'm doing at the moment and that's really what I'm thinking about now.
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We talking about revolution because that's the era that you're caught in.
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You do a show to be a hit and hopefully run a couple of years.
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I grew up in Philadelphia.
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I've always performed. I've done plays at home.
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There's a difference between knowing what's on the page in a history book and actually feeling that page have curves and valleys.
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If I have learned anything as a scientist, it is that one should not make things complicated when a simple explanation will do.
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No, sir, th' dimmycratic party ain't on speakin' terms with itsilf. Whin ye see two men with white neckties go into a sthreet car an' set in opposite corners while wan mutthers Thraiter an' th' other hisses Miscreent ye can bet they're two dimmycratic leaders thryin' to reunite th' gran' ol' party.
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You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one.
