John Irving Quotes
When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed.
Quotes to Explore
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The harder you work, the luckier you get.
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I was born in San Diego, and we moved to Los Angeles when I was seven. A couple of years later, I started acting!
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You can celebrate the female form in comfort. We left corsets behind in the dark ages, so why bring them back now?
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We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease.
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Happy the man when he has not the defects of his qualities.
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I'm an outsider.
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Life is precious, and when someone dies it's an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn't. It really crushed him.
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
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People would pay money to work at CNN.
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Telecoms is a national business. There isn't a European market. There's no Telecom Italia in France.
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As a writer given to the old formalities of rhyme and meter, I sometimes feel endangered these days.
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For many years, I hated nature. As a student, I refused to put a plant anywhere - a living plant, that is. Dead plants were OK.
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We all have hierarchies at work - even on set, the runner would never walk up to the director and ask for a cup of coffee.
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I had to learn not to let anyone push me around, to be brave and to say things I knew might make people mad.
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I understood from a very young age that school was important and that my parents were making great sacrifices for me. Every morning I saw my father get up and go to a job that he didn't really like. They came to France for the same reasons all immigrants move to another country - so their kids could have a better way of life.
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A great city is that which has the greatest men and women.
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I quite like antiques. I like things that are old and the history they bring with them. I would rather fly to Morocco on an $800 ticket and buy a chair for $300 than spend $1,100 on one at Pottery Barn.
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The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.
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I think writing is one of the toughest things.
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Me and my partners had been stealing cars for a while.
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There's nothing wrong with giving yourself a pat on the back. If you can't do that, you can't be objective about your work. You can't be conceited or cocky either, but you can't be too modest either.
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A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.
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Most American heroes of the Revolutionary period are by now two men, the actual man and the romantic image. Some are even three men - the actual man, the image, and the debunked remains.
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When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed.
