Quotes by John Irving

About John Irving:

John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

You know, people think you have to be dumb to skip rope for 45 minutes. No, you have to be able to imagine something else. While you're skipping rope, you have to be able to see something else.

John Irving

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.

John Irving

I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft. I can write more quickly than I can read.

John Irving

If you're still wondering about details - how am I going to get these two to meet, or whatever - when you're writing, you can't pay proper attention to the sentences themselves.

John Irving

I had a particular affinity for wrestling, and it did have a lot to do with being small and being combative - and being angry. And when you're small and you don't back down, you get in a lot of fights.

John Irving

There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.

John Irving

I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.

John Irving

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

John Irving

I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere di...

John Irving

I never wanted my kids to feel I was more interested in anything I was doing than I was in them.

John Irving

I think better of our behaviour as individuals than I do when we see ourselves as members of a group. It's when people start forming groups that we have to watch our backs.

John Irving

My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman ...

John Irving

Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.

John Irving

There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.

John Irving

When I feel like being a director, I write a novel.

John Irving

I'm not a twentieth-century novelist, I'm not modern, and certainly not postmodern. I follow the form of the nineteenth-century novel; that was the century that produced the models of the form. I'm old-fashioned, a storyteller. I'm not an analyst, an...

John Irving

I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed.

John Irving

The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.

John Irving

It was one of those ridiculous arrangements that couples make when they are separating, but before they are divorced - when they still imagine that children and property can be shared with more magnanimity than recrimination.

John Irving

I you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

John Irving

Life is serious but art is fun!

John Irving

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Irving
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist and screenwriter
  • BornMarch 2, 1942
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Screenwriter; Novelist
  • WorksThe World According To Garp; A Prayer For Owen Meany
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Lambda Literary Award; National Book Award