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Quotes by John Irving

Half my life is an act of revision.
– John Irving
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.
– John Irving
There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep.
– John Irving
To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.
– John Irving
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
– John Irving
You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
– John Irving
Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
– John Irving
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
– John Irving
You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
– John Irving
The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.
– John Irving
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.
– John Irving
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.
– John Irving
I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
– John Irving
I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.
– John Irving
And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.
– John Irving