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When however small a measure of jealousy is mixed with misunderstanding, there is going to be trouble.
John Irving
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So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone's older brother and someone's older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them.
John Irving
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Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.
John Irving
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A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.
John Irving
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What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.
John Irving
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You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.
John Irving
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Like many successful people he made good use of disappointments - responding to them with energy, with near-frenzied activity, rather than needing to recover from them.
John Irving
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Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either
John Irving
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Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.
John Irving
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Kids are beautiful, man. And they know much more than grownups think they know. Kids are just perfect people until grownups get their hands on them.
John Irving
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Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.
John Irving
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Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela's empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch's reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer was inclined to hurry - in order not to miss the bedtime story.
John Irving
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Every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.
John Irving
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It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually; and almost everyone needs to.
John Irving
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When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
John Irving
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It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious. Prostitutes know this too.
John Irving
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In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?
John Irving
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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
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Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student—and not a good one—and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved.
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People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
John Irving
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Loving someone as a parent can produce a cloud that conceals from vision what correct behavior is.
John Irving
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If you care about something you have to protect it. If you're lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.
John Irving
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I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that; but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.
John Irving
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Death, it seems," Garp wrote, "does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.
John Irving
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Quote of the day
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
Georges Bataille
John Irving
Creative Commons
Born:
March 2, 1942
(age 82)
Bio:
John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
Known for:
Avenue of Mysteries (2015)
The World According to Garp (1978)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
The Cider House Rules (1985)
In One Person (2012)
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love
life
time
death
garp
imagine
child
family
sentence
crazy
feel
story
memory
losing
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