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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If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?
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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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Louie and Seabiscuit were both Californians and both on the sports pages in the 1930s. I was fascinated. When I learned about his World War II experiences, I thought, 'If this guy is still alive, I want to meet him.'
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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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The animal encounter poem is now so distinct a genre that it would be possible to create a full-length anthology from deer encounter poems alone, and many varieties of experience would emerge from such an exercise.
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The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all. I can't describe how deeply I love them all.
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We do have a distorted view of our fantasies in society, but that's because we don't talk about them enough.
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I think every major character I've played was originally for an older woman. I have no idea what that says. I guess I'm mature for my age.
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'Hispanic' was the term adopted by the government - by the Nixon government in particular - and that made the community feel it was being branded.
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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.
