Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves--to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!
John IrvingWhen I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.
John IrvingIt seems to me that a great deal of this type of censorship has to do with absolving parents of responsibility - parents who just plop their kids in front of the television and leave them there hour upon hour.
John IrvingWhen someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long timeโthe way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comesโwhen there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, foreverโthere comes another day, and another specifically missing part.
John IrvingWhat was even more germane was my study of the history of religion. It was one of the few things in school I was fascinated by.
John Irving