So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someoneโs older brother and someoneโs older sister โ they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother โ 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 IrvingIn a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?
John IrvingI have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.
John IrvingI don't want you to describe to meโnot everโwhat 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 IrvingTed 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.
John Irving