The collection / 115 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1942 AD

Men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God

John Irving / quote

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02c. 1942 AD

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

John Irving / quote

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03c. 1942 AD

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

John Irving / quote

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04c. 1942 AD

Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!" Larch blurted hastily. ..."In a better world..." she began patiently."No, not in a better world!" he cried. "In this one--in this world. I take this world as a given. Talk to me about this world!" ..."Oh, I can't always be right," Larch said tiredly."Yes, I know," Nurse Caroline said sympathetically. "It's because even a good man can't always be right that we need a society, that we need certain rules--call them priorities, if you prefer," she said. ...Always in the background of his mind, there was a newborn baby crying... And they were not crying to be born, he knew; they were crying because they were born.

John Irving / quote

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05c. 1942 AD

As for Jenny, she felt only that women - just like men - should at least be able to make conscious decisions about the course of their lives; if that made her a feminist, she said, then she guessed she was one.

John Irving / quote

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06c. 1942 AD

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casual

John Irving / quote

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07c. 1942 AD

Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?

John Irving / quote

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08c. 1942 AD

...the single ingredient in American literature that distinguishes it from other literatures of the world is a kind of giddy, illogical hopefulness. It is quite technically sophisticated while remaining ideologically naïve.

John Irving / quote

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09c. 1942 AD

The object of war is to survive it.

John Irving / quote

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10c. 1942 AD

She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story - not necessarily what did happen or what had happened.

John Irving / quote

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11c. 1942 AD

I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around.

John Irving / quote

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12c. 1942 AD

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 / quote

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13c. 1942 AD

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

John Irving / quote

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14c. 1942 AD

With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.

John Irving / quote

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15c. 1942 AD

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 / quote

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16c. 1942 AD

It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.

John Irving / quote

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17c. 1942 AD

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 / quote

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18c. 1942 AD

I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.

John Irving / quote

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19c. 1942 AD

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 / quote

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