John Irving Quotes

The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me.

A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.

I'm not typing. I write only by longhand. I've always written first drafts by hand and then once I was into a second or third draft I wrote insert pages on a typewriter. But I got rid of all my typewriters about three or four novels ago and now I do everything by hand. I write by hand because it makes me go slow and going slow is what I like.

There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.

You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.

but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

You don't have to be in the habit of going to church to listen to such a literary minister; you don't have to be a believer to be moved by Mr. Buechner's faith.

But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.

There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.

If you feel so strongly about what's on television, don't have one.

Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.

My life is a reading list.

Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.

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.

How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.