Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!
John IrvingYou take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.
John IrvingIn an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
John IrvingI have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.โ (David Copperfield) โBut all that night he lay awake because the phantoms of those days were not gone. Like the tiny, terrible holes in the prophylactics, the phantoms of those days were not easy to detectโand their meaning was unknownโbut they were there.
John Irving