Background Image

...

Before I Began The Cider House Rules, I Thought I Wanted To Write About A Father-son Relationship That Was Closer, More Conflicted, And Ultimately More Loving, Than Most. Then I Began To Think Of A Relationship Between An Old Orphanage Director And An Unadoptable Orphan - A Kid Who Goes Out Into The World And Fails And Keeps Coming Back, So That The Old Guy Ends Up With Someone He's Got To Keep.

-John Irving

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Before I Began The

John Irving

...

Before I Began The Cider House Rules, I Thought I Wanted To Write About A Father-son Relationship That Was Closer, More Conflicted, And Ultimately More Loving, Than Most. Then I Began To Think Of A Relationship Between An Old Orphanage Director And An Unadoptable Orphan - A Kid Who Goes Out Into The World And Fails And Keeps Coming Back, So That The Old Guy Ends Up With Someone He's Got To Keep.

Views: 5

Topic

More From John Irving

You Think You Have A Memory; But It Has You!

It Is Amazing To Me, Now, How Such Wild Imaginings And Philosophies - Inspired By A Night Charged With Frights And Calamities - Made Such Perfectly Good Sense To Owen Meany And Me, But Good Friends Are Nothing To Each Other If They Are Not Supportive.

...every Study Of The Gods, Of Everyone's Gods, Is A Revelation Of Vengeance Towards The Innocent.

It Is Much Easier To Be Flexible About Where A Story Begins Than It Ever Was For Me To Change My Mind About Where And How A Story Ended.

There's No Reason You Should Write Any Novel Quickly.

You Cannot Drive With Your Eyes In The Rear-view Mirror… But Dignity Is Difficult To Maintain. Stamina Requires Constant Upkeep. Repetition Is Boring. And You Pay For Grace.

They All Settled Into Being The Kind Of Friends When They Heard From Each Other.... Or When They Occasionally Got Together. And When They Were Not In Touch, They Did Not Think Of One Another.

. . .there Are Moments When Time Does Stop. We Must Be Alert Enough To Notice Such Moments . . .

The Building Of The Architecture Of A Novel - The Craft Of It - Is Something I Never Tire Of.

Because Abortions Are Illegal, Women Who Need And Want Them Have No Choice In The Matter, And You-because You Know How To Perform Them-have No Choice, Either

The Excitement Of Anticipation Was *almost* Equal To The Thrill Of Lovemaking.

My Dear Boy, Please Don’t Put A Label On Me—don’t Make Me A Category Before You Get To Know Me!

Dan Suggested To Owen And Me That We Were Better Off To Not Involve Ourselves With Hester. How True! But How We Wanted To Be Involved In The Thrilling Real-life Sleaziness That We Suspected Hester Was In The Thick-of. We Were In A Phase, Through Television And The Movies, Of Living Only Vicariously. Even Faintly Sordid Silliness Excited Us If It Put Us In Contact With Love.

Wherever The Tv Glows, There Sits Someone Who Isn't Reading.

She Sat Keenly White And Still Among Them, A Witness To Everything--maybe Determining Nothing, Possibly Judging It All.

I Want To Go On Being A Student," I Told Him. "i Want To Be A Teacher. I'm Just A Reader," I Said. "don't Sound So Ashamed," He Said. "reading Is A Gift." "i Learned It From You," I Told Him. "it Doesn't Matter Where You Learned It- It's A Gift. If You Care About Something, You Have To Protect It. If You're Lucky Enough To Find A Way Of Life You Love, You Have To Find The Courage To Live It.

You Take Every Opportunity Given You In This World, Even If You Have Too Many Opportunities. One Day, The Opportunities Stop, You Know.

Ted 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.

I Think The Sport Of Wrestling, Which I Became Involved With At The Age Of 14... I Competed Until I Was 34, Kind Of Old For A Contact Sport. I Coached The Sport Until I Was 47. I Think The Discipline Of Wrestling Has Given Me The Discipline I Have To Write.

What Has Been Violated Here Is Your Freedom Of Choice, And Every Woman's Freedom Of Choice, Too.

Freedom Of Choice

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.

What Is Hardest To Accept About The Passage Of Time Is That The People Who Once Mattered The Most To Us Wind Up In Parentheses.

There Are Always Suicides Among People Who Are Unable To Say What They Mean.

Half My Life Is An Act Of Revision.

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.

Like Being Alone

No One But Me Ever Put A Hand On Me To Feel That Baby. No One Wanted To Put His Ear Against It And Listen...you Shouldn't Have A Baby If There's No One Who Wants To Feel It Kick Or Listen To It Move.

It's Not Right To Hurt Or Deceive Someone Who's Already Been Hurt And Deceived.

I Don’t Have To Say To You Or Anyone In Our Wrestling Community That We Are A Small World Unto Ourselves And There Is Often A Big Difference In How Much We Love And Understand Each Other And How Little We’re Understood Or Appreciated By People Who Spend Their Weekends Watching Basketball.

I Always Know More About The Ending, Even The Aftermath To The Ending, Than I Know About The Beginning. And So There's A Construction That Works From Back To Front.

I Think Now That Is The Nature Of Hymns-they Make Us Want To Repeat Them...they Are A Part Of Any Service, And Often The Only Part Of A Funeral Service, That Makes Us Feel Everything Is Acceptable.

A Writer's Job Is To Imagine Everything So Personally That The Fiction Is As Vivid As Memories.

This Is A Writer’s Lesson: To Learn That The Sounds That We Imagine Can Be The Clearest, Loudest Sounds Of All.

I'm A Very Old-fashioned Novelist. I Write 19th-century Novels, Where A Lot Of Rules Apply.

And Father Said, “there Are No Happy Endings.” “right!” Cried Iowa Bob – An Odd Mixture Of Exuberance And Stoicism In His Cracked Voice. “death Is Horrible, Final, And Frequently Premature,” Coach Bob Declared. “so What?” My Father Said. “right!” Cried Iowa Bob. “that’s The Point: So What?” Thus The Family Maxim Was That An Unhappy Ending Did Not Undermine A Rich And Energetic Life. This Was Based On The Belief That There Were No Happy Endings.

All I Say Is: Let Us Leave Les Folles Alone; Let's Just Leave Them Be. Don't Judge Them. You Are Not Superior To Them - Don't Put Them Down.

You Only Grow By Coming To The End Of Something And By Beginning Something Else.

People Only Ask Questions When They're Ready To Hear The Answers.

It Is Exhausting To Be Seventeen And Not Know Who You Are.

I Think That Writers Are, At Best, Outsiders To The Society They Inhabit. They Have A Kind Of Detachment, Or Try To Have.

What 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.

You Bet I Write Disaster Fiction. We Have Compiled A Disastrous Record On This Planet, A Record Of Stupidity And Absurdity And Self-abuse And Self-aggrandizement And Self-deception And Pompousness And Self-righteousness And Cruelty And Indifference Beyond What Any Other Species Has Demonstrated The Capacity For, Which Is The Capacity For All The Above.

I Don't Begin A Novel Until I Have Written, Not Just The Last Sentence, But Usually, As A Result Thereof, Many Of The Surrounding Final Paragraphs, So That In Addition To Knowing What Happens, I Know What The Voice Is.

All His Life He Would Hold This Moment As Exemplary Of What Love Was. It Was Not Wanting Anything More, Nor Was It Expecting People To Exceed What They Had Just Accomplished; It Was Simply Feeling So Complete.

If You Are Careful,' Garp Wrote, 'if You Use Good Ingredients, And You Don't Take Any Shortcuts, Then You Can Usually Cook Something Very Good. Sometimes It Is The Only Worthwhile Product You Can Salvage From A Day; What You Make To Eat. With Writing, I Find, You Can Have All The Right Ingredients, Give Plenty Of Time And Care, And Still Get Nothing. Also True Of Love. Cooking, Therefore, Can Keep A Person Who Tries Hard Sane.

I’m Not Afraid, But I’m Very Nervous.

There's Nothing As Scary As The Future.

I Grew Up In A Family Where, Through My Teenage Years, I Was Expected To Go To Church On Sunday. It Wasn't Terribly Painful.

The Object Of War Is To Survive It.

In This World,” Franny Once Observed, “just As You’re Trying To Think Of Yourself As Memorable, There Is Always Someone Who Forgets That That They Have Met You.

The More Clearly One Sees This World; The More One Is Obliged To Pretend It Does Not Exist.

I'm Old-fashioned, A Storyteller. I'm Not An Analyst And I'm Not An Intellectual.

Before I Began The Cider House Rules, I Thought I Wanted To Write About A Father-son Relationship That Was Closer, More Conflicted, And Ultimately More Loving, Than Most. Then I Began To Think Of A Relationship Between An Old Orphanage Director And An Unadoptable Orphan - A Kid Who Goes Out Into The World And Fails And Keeps Coming Back, So That The Old Guy Ends Up With Someone He's Got To Keep.

Being Wrong About Important Things Is Exhausting.

Important Things

People Are Either Attracted To The Unseemly Or Disapproving Of It, Or Both; Yet We Try To Sound Superior To The Unseemly By Pretending To Be Amused By It Or Indifferent To It.

What Do Americans Know About Morality? They Don't Want Their Presidents To Have Penises But They Don't Mind If Their Presidents Covertly Arrange To Support The Nicaraguan Rebel Forces After Congress Has Restricted Such Aid; They Don't Want Their Presidents To Deceive Their Wives But They Don't Mind If Their Presidents Deceive Congress- Lie To The People And Violate The People's Constitution!

My Life Is A Reading List.

And When You Love A Book, Commit One Glorious Sentence Of It-perhaps Your Favorite Sentence-to Memory. That Way You Won't Forget The Language Of The Story That Moved You To Tears.

Nearly Everything Seems A Letdown After A Writer Has Finished Writing Something.

All The Unimaginative Assholes In The World Who Imagine That Shakespeare Couldn't Have Written Shakespeare Because It Was Impossible From What We Know About Shakespeare Of Stratford That Such A Man Would Have Had The Experience To Imagine Such Things - Well, This Denies The Very Thing That Separates Shakespeare From Almost Every Other Writer In The World: An Imagination That Is Untouchable And Nonstop.

I Have A Very Poor Record At Multiple Choice Questions.

Multiple Choice

If You Presume To Love Something, You Must Love The Process Of It Much More Than You Love The Finished Product.

…there Was No More Safety To Be Found In Love Than There Was To Be Found In A Virus.

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.

Self-hatred Is Worse Than Loneliness.

You Can't Say You're Going To Ban Something In The Name Of Good Taste, Because Then You Have Directed Someone To Play The Role Of Good-taste Police. We - Americans - Permit Bad Taste In This Country. In Fact, We Even Encourage It.

I Believe In Plot, In Development Of Character, In The Effect Of The Passage Of Time, In A Good Story - Better Than Something You Might Find In The Newspaper. And I Believe A Novel Should Be As Complicated And Involved As You're Capable Of Making It.

Thus We Try To Keep Our Heroes Alive; Hence We Remember Them.

Most Places We Leave In Childhood Grow Less, Not More, Fancy.

So We Dream On. Thus We Invent Our Lives. We Give Ourselves A Sainted Mother, We Make Our Father A Hero; And Someone’s Older Brother And Someone’s Older Sister – They Become Our Heroes Too. We Invent What We Love And What We Fear. There Is Always A Brave Lost Brother – 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.

It Is Your Responsibility To Find Fault With Me, It Is Mine To Hear You Out. But Don't Expect Me To Change.

I Don't Want You To Describe To Me—not Ever—what 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.

My Brain Is Sending Poison To My Heart.

We Will Often Do Anything To Pretend That Nothing Is On Our Minds.

… But Only Because Exhaustion Is A Life-sign; It Is At Least A Form Of Being Human.

Maybe Television Causes Cancer, Garp Thinks; But His Real Irritation Is A Writer's Irritation: He Knows That Wherever The Tv Glows, There Sits Someone Who Isn't Reading.

The Only Way You Get Americans To Notice Anything Is To Tax Them Or Draft Them Or Kill Them.

If You Feel So Strongly About What's On Television, Don't Have One.

I Do Know Where I'm Going And It's Just A Matter Of Finding The Language To Get There.

When Time Passes, It's The People Who Knew You Whom You Want To See; They're The Ones You Can Talk To. When Enough Time Passes, What's It Matter What They Did To You?

A Woman Half Dressed Seemed To Have Some Power, But A Man Was Simply Not As Handsome As When He Was Naked, And Not As Secure As When He Was Clothed.

A Part Of Adolescence Is Feelimg That There's No One Else Around Who's Enough Like Youself To Understand You.

If We Live Long Enough, We Become Caricatures Of Ourselves.

How We Love To Love Things For Other People; How We Love To Have Other People Love Things Through Our Eyes.

Sometimes That's A Year, Sometimes It's 18 Months, Where All I'm Doing Is Taking Notes. I'm Reconstructing The Story From The Back To The Front So That I Know Where The Front Is.

When 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.

Owen Meany Who Rarely Wasted Words And Who Had The Conversation-stopping Habit Of Dropping Remarks Like Coins Into A Deep Pool Of Water... Remarks That Sank, Like Truth, To The Bottom Of The Pool Where They Would Remain Untouchable.

I Don't Begin A Novel Or A Screenplay Until I Know The Ending. And I Don't Mean Only That I Have To Know What Happens. I Mean That I Have To Hear The Actual Sentences. I Have To Know What Atmosphere The Words Convey.

Life Is An X-rated Soap Opera.

Nothing Bears Out In Practice What It Promises Incipiently.

Lilly Was Not Crazy. She Left A Serious Suicide Note. 'sorry,' Said The Note. 'just Not Big Enough.

He Also Knew That Rivals Are Best Unmanned By Being Ignored.

All Men Are Liars, Said Roberta Muldoon, Who Knew This Was True Because She Had Once Been A Man.

It's Magical Thinking To Imagine That The Reason Unspeakable Things Are Being Perpetrated By Younger And Younger People Is That They've Fallen Under The Influence Of Seductive, Lascivious, Prurient, And Violent Material In Books, Films, Television. 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.

You Can Learn A Lot From Your Lovers, But-for The Most Part-you Get To Keep Your Friends Longer, And You Learn More From Them.

If I Have Any Advantage, Maybe, As A Writer, It Is That I Don't Think I'm Very Interesting. I Mean, Beginning A Novel With The Last Sentence Is A Pretty Plodding Way To Spend Your Life.

The Concept Of Writing A Novel And Not Knowing Where It's Going - I Don't Know How To Do That. Novels Are Plot- And Character-driven, So If I Don't Know What Becomes Of People, How Can I Know Where It Should Begin?

I Am Doomed To Remember A Boy With A Wrecked Voice. Not Because Of His Voice, Or Because He Was The Smallest Person I Ever Knew, Or Even Because He Was The Instrument Of My Mother's Death, But Because He Is The Reason I Believe In God. I Am A Christian Because Of Owen Meany.

Don’t You Understand?” He Would Say, “you Imagine The Story Better Than I Remember It.

And I Don't Want To Begin Something, I Don't Want To Write That First Sentence Until All The Important Connections In The Novel Are Known To Me. As If The Story Has Already Taken Place, And It's My Responsibility To Put It In The Right Order To Tell It To You.

I Believe In Rules Of Behavior, And I'm Quite Interested In Stories About The Consequences Of Breaking Those Rules.

I've Always Been Slow But I'm Even Slower Now. I'm More Into The Waiting, Or I Guess I'm More Patient About The Waiting.

We Are Formed By What We Desire

The Gardener Had A Dread Of Small Women; He'd Always Imagined Them To Have An Anger Disproportionate To Their Size.

My Old Coach Used To Say That If You Were In It For The Match, If You Were In It For The Trophies, You Were In It For The Wrong Reasons.

We Often Need To Lose Sight Of Our Priorities In Order To See Them.

There Are Few Things As Seemingly Untouched By The Real World As A Child Asleep.

Garp Drank The Beer And Wondered If Everything Was An Anticlimax.

It Was One Of Those Ridiculous Arrangements That Couples Make When They Are Separating, But Before They Are Divorced - When They Still Imagine That Children And Property Can Be Shared With More Magnanimity Than Recrimination.

You Know, People Think You Have To Be Dumb To Skip Rope For 45 Minutes. No, You Have To Be Able To Imagine Something Else. While You're Skipping Rope, You Have To Be Able To See Something Else.

Be Serious. Life Hurts. Reflect What Hurts. I Don't Mean That You Can't Also Be Funny, Or Have Fun, But At The End Of The Day, Stories Are About What You Lose.

Here Is The Trap You Are In.... And It's Not My Trap—i Haven't Trapped You. Because Abortions Are Illegal, Women Who Need And Want Them Have No Choice In The Matter, And You—because You Know How To Perform Them—have No Choice, Either. What Has Been Violated Here Is Your Freedom Of Choice, And Every Woman's Freedom Of Choice, Too. If Abortion Was Legal, A Woman Would Have A Choice—and So Would You. You Could Feel Free Not To Do It Because Someone Else Would. But The Way It Is, You're Trapped. Women Are Trapped. Women Are Victims, And So Are You.

… And So He Tried To Accept The Ache In His Heart As What Dr. Larch Would Call The Common Symptoms Of Normal Life.

We Invent What We Love And What We Fear.

I'm Not Proselytizing My Method. I Don't Believe That One Writer Should Tell Other Writers How To Write.

But Writers, Garp Knew, Were Just Observers - Good And Ruthless Imitators Of Human Behavior.

There's No Monkey Business About This Election,' He Told The Voters. 'if You're Enough Of An Asshole To Vote For Nixon, Your Dumb Vote Will Be Counted––just Like Anybody Else!

Adolescence-is It The First Time In Life We Discover That We Have Something Terrible To Hide From Those Who Love Us?

In Increments Both Measurable And Not, Our Childhood Is Stolen From Us -- Not Always In One Momentous Event But Often In A Series Of Small Robberies, Which Add Up To The Same Loss.

I've Always Been Interested In Miracles, Or The Miraculous Of The Unexplained. I Don't Scoff At What Makes People Believe Or Want To Believe. I Think I Understand The Tremendous Attraction Of The Mysteries Of The Church To The Same Degree That I Understand And Appreciate The Frustration People Feel, Especially Believers, With The Human Rule-making Arm Of The Church, With The Not-miraculous Part Of The Church - Any Church.

Kids Are Perfect People Till Grownups Get Their Hands On Them.

In A School Community, Someone Who Reads A Book For Some Secretive Purpose, Other Than Discussing It, Is Strange. What Was She Reading For?

As It Was, Things Went From Bad To Worse, As They Often Will When Amateurs Are Involved In An Activity That They Perform In Bad Temper – Or In A Hurry.

You've Got To Get Obsessed And Stay Obsessed.

It's A No-win Argument - That Business Of What We're Born With And What Our Environment Does To Us. And It's A Boring Argument, Because It Simplifies The Mysteries That Attend Both Our Birth And Our Growth.

In The World According To Garp, We Are All Terminal Cases

Imagining Something Is Better Than Remembering Something.

Like Many Successful People He Made Good Use Of Disappointments - Responding To Them With Energy, With Near-frenzied Activity, Rather Than Needing To Recover From Them.

I Am Not Attracted To Writers By Style. What Style Do Dickens, Grass, And Vonnegut Have In Common? How Silly! I Am Attracted To What Makes Them Angry, What Makes Them Passionate, What Outrages Them, What They Applaud And Find Sympathetic In Human Beings And What They Detest About Human Beings, Too. They Are Writers Of Great Emotional Range.

Death, It Seems," Garp Wrote, "does Not Like To Wait Until We Are Prepared For It. Death Is Indulgent And Enjoys, When It Can, A Flair For The Dramatic.

When However Small A Measure Of Jealousy Is Mixed With Misunderstanding, There Is Always Going To Be Trouble.

Misunderstanding

If You Asked Me One Day, I Might Say, "well, Sometimes I Feel A Little Bit Religious." If You Asked Me Another Day, I'd Just Say Flat Out, "no."

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.

But I Felt Certain That If The World Would Stop Indulging Wars And Famines And Other Perils, It Would Be Possible For Human Beings To Embarrass Each Other To Death. Our Self-destruction Might Take A Little Longer That Way, But I Believe It Would Be No Less Complete.

I Have Lots Of Notebooks Around, Because One Great Advantage Of Writing By Hand-in Addition To How Much It Slows You Down-is That It Makes Me Write At The Speed That I Feel I Should Be Composing, Rather Than Faster Than I Can Think, Which Is What Happens To Me On Any Keyboard.

He Was One Of Those People Things Came Easily To, But He Did Little To Demonstrate That He Deserved To Be Gifted.

Plot Is A Map And I Begin With It. It Is What Made Me Admire The Novels Of The 19th Century; That The Stories Are Foreshadowed. TheyÕre Going Someplace.

When 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 Time—the 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 Comes—when There's A Particular Missing Part That Overwhelms You With The Feeling That She's Gone, Forever—there Comes Another Day, And Another Specifically Missing Part.

I've Always Preferred Writing In Longhand. I've Always Written First Drafts In Longhand.

In The World According To Her Father, Jenny Garp Knew, We Must Have Energy. Her Famous Grandmother, Jenny Fields, Once Thought Of Us As Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, And Goners. But In The World According To Garp, We Are All Terminal Cases.

When I Feel Like Being A Director, I Write A Novel.

We Permit Bad Taste In This Country. In Fact, We Even Encourage It - And Reward It In All Manner Of Ways.

Know The Story Before You Fall In Love With Your First Sentence. If You Don’t Know The Story Before You Begin The Story, What Kind Of A Storyteller Are You? Just An Ordinary Kind, Just A Mediocre Kind – Making It Up As You Go Along, Like A Common Liar.

Falling In Love

He Had Heard Her Say, So Many Times, That A Society That Approved Of Making Abortion Illegal Was A Society That Approved Of Violence Against Women; That Making Abortion Illegal Was Simply A Sanctimonious, Self-righteous Form Of Violence Against Women- It Was Just Another Way Of Legalizing Violence Against Women, Nurse Caroline Would Say.

People Regard Art Too Highly, And History Not Enough

Being Reviewed Is Being Condescended To By Your Inferiors.

Anyone Can Be Sentimental About The Nativity; Any Fool Can Feel Like A Christian At Christmas. But Easter Is The Main Event; If You Don’t Believe In The Resurrection, You’re Not A Believer." “if You Don’t Believe In Easter,” Owen Meany Said. “don’t Kid Yourself—don’t Call Yourself A Christian.

My Life As A Writer Consists Of 1/8 Talent And 7/8 Discipline.

Patriotism Is Not Necessarily Defined As Blind Devotion To A President's Particular Agenda - And That To Dispute A Presidential Policy Is Not Necessarily Anti-american.

In 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.

Religious Freedom Should Work Two Ways: We Should Be Free To Practice The Religion Of Our Choice, But We Must Also Be Free From Having Someone Else's Religion Practiced On Us.

For Most Of My Life, When I've Finished The Book I'm Writing, There've Always Been As Many As Two Or Three Other Novels Waiting To Be Written Next. And The Decision Driving Which One Of Them It Should Be Was Never Based On How Long It Had Waited Or How Many Accumulated Pages Of Notes I Had.

But Who Can Distinguish Between Falling In Love And Imagining Falling In Love? Even Genuinely Falling In Love Is An Act Of The Imagination.

Falling In Love

You Know, Everybody Dies. My Parents Died. Your Father Died. Everybody Dies. I'm Going To Die Too. So Will You. The Thing Is, To Have A Life Before We Die. It Can Be A Real Adventure Having A Life

No Adult In My Family Would Ever Tell Me Anything About Who My Father Was. I Knew From An Older Cousin - Only Four Years Older Than I Am - Everything, Or What Little I Could Discover About Him.

Among Adults – And Among Orphans – Wilbur Larch Noted That Delirious Happiness Was Rare.

Newspapers Are Even Worse For Me Than Ice Cream; Headlines, And The Big Issues That Generate The Headlines, Are Pure Fat.

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.

Goodnight You Princes Of Maine, You Kings Of New England.

The History Of A City Was Like The History Of A Family—there Is Closeness And Even Affection, But Death Eventually Separates Everyone From Each Other. It Is Only The Vividness Of Memory That Keeps The Dead Alive Forever; A Writer’s Job Is To Imagine Everything So Personally That The Fiction Is As Vivid As Our Personal Memories.

I'm Not At All Contemporary, Not Even Modern, And The Fact That I Would Be So Quaintly Attracted To That Wrestling Rule Makes Me, I Suppose, Seem All The More Old-fashioned. I Believe In Rules Of Behavior, And I'm Quite Interested In Stories About The Consequences Of Breaking Those Rules.

He Was Too Young To Know That, In Any Novel With A Reasonable Amount Of Forethought, There Were No Coincidences.

You Let Me Drown!” Owen Said. “you Didn’t Do Anything! You Just Watched Me Drown! I’m Already Dead!” He Told Us. “remember That: You Let Me Die.

It Was A Sound Like Someone Trying Not To Make A Sound.

Gender Mattered A Whole Lot Less To Shakespeare Than It Seems To Matter To Us.

If I Had To Be Anything," He Told Her, "i'd Probably Be A Socialist, But I Don't Want To Be Anything.

Life Is Serious But Art Is Fun!

If You Can't Love Crudeness, How Can You Truly Love Mankind?

What A Phrase That Is: 'that Explains Everything!' I Know Better Than To Think Anything 'explains Everything' Today.

I Am Compulsive About Writing, I Need To Do It The Way I Need Sleep And Exercise And Food And Sex; I Can Go Without It For A While, But Then I Need It.

Kids Are Beautiful, Man. And They Know Much More Than Grownups Think They Know. Kids Are Just Perfect People Until Grownups Get Their Hands On Them.

There's No Reason You Shouldn't, As A Writer, Not Be Aware Of The Necessity To Revise Yourself Constantly.

The Lie, Of Course, Is More Interesting.

There Was No Manifestation Of Contemporary Culture That Did Not Indicate To My Grandmother How Steadfast Was The Nation's Decline, How Merciless Our Mental And Moral Deterioration, How Swiftly All-embracing Our Final Decadence. I Never Saw Her Read A Book Again; But She Referred To Books Often - As If They Were Shrines And Cathedrals Of Learning That Television Had Plundered And Then Abandoned.

Grant Us Safe Lodging, And Holy Rest,” Mrs. Grogan Was Saying, “and Peace At Last.” Amen, Thought Wilbur Larch, The Saint Of St. Cloud’s, Who Was Seventy-something, And An Ether Addict, And Who Felt That He’d Come A Long Way And Still Had A Long Way To Go.

If Watching Television Doesn't Hasten Death, It Surely Manages To Make Death Very Inviting; For Television So Shamelessly Sentimentalizes And Romanticizes Death That It Makes The Living Feel They Have Missed Something - Just By Staying Alive.

The First Of My Father's Illusions Was That Bears Could Survive The Life Led By Human Beings; The Second Was That Human Beings Could Survive A Life In Hotels.

Wrestling Was My First Success, The First Thing That Confirmed That I Could Be Good At Anything. Devoting Yourself To Wrestling, Or Tennis, Or Skiing, Or Dance, Or To A Musical Instrument Is A Longing To Be Disciplined For A Purpose.

If Pride Is A Sin ... Moral Pride Is The Greatest Sin.

She Felt Detached From Her Family, And Thought It Strange How They Had Lavished So Much Attention On Her, As A Child, And Then At Some Appointed, Prearranged Time They Seemed To Stop The Flow Of Affection And Being The Expectations - As If, For A Brief Phrase, You Were Expected To Absorb Love (and Get Enough), And Then, For A Much Longer And More Serious Phase, You Were Expected To Fulfill Certain Obligations.

(baseball) Is A Game With A Lot Of Waiting In It; It Is A Game With Increasingly Heightened Anticipation Of Increasingly Limited Action

I Always Thought That You Could Do Worse Than Find Yourself Dying In The Company Of A Devoted Former Student.

Finding Yourself

Because Who Can Describe That Look That Triggers The Memory Of Loved Ones? Who Can Anticipate The Frown, The Smile, Or The Misplaced Lock Of Hair That Sends A Swift, Undeniable Signal From The Past? Who Can Ever Estimate The Power Of Association, Which Is Always Strongest In Moments Of Love And In Memories Of Death?

When Jack Burns Needed To Hold His Mother's Hand, His Fingers Could See In The Dark.

The Arrangements That Couples Make In Order To Maintain Civility In The Midst Of Their Journey To Divorce Are Often Most Elaborate When The Professed Top Priority Is To Protect A Child.

You're Nice,' Cushie Told Him, Squeezing His Hand. 'and You're My Oldest Friend.' But They Both Must Have Known That You Can Know Someone All Your Life And Never Quite Be Friends.

Whatever I Write, No Matter How Gray Or Dark The Subject Matter, It's Still Going To Be A Comic Novel.

You Don't Want To Dwell On Your Enemies, You Know. I Basically Feel So Superior To My Critics For The Simple Reason That They Haven't Done What I Do. Most Book Reviewers Haven't Written 11 Novels. Many Of Them Haven't Written One.

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.

I Never Know When I Finish The Novel I Am Writing Which Will Be The Next Novel Out Of The Station.

I Feel More A Part Of The Wrestling Community Than I Feel I Belong To The Community Of Arts And Letters. Why? Because Wrestling Requires Even More Dedication Than Writing Because Wrestling Represents The Most Difficult And Rewarding Objective That I Have Ever Dedicated Myself To; Because Wrestling And Wrestling Coaches Are Among The Most Disciplined And Self-sacrificing People I Have Ever Known.

I Have No Respect For The Right-to-life Position, Though I Have Every Respect For An Individual Who Says, "i Could Never Have That Procedure, I Could Never See A Film Or Read A Book About That Procedure." It Doesn't Bother Me If People Feel That Way.

He Wished He Could Arrange A Maiming As A Kind Of Moral Lesson

If You Don't Feel That You Are Possibly On The Edge Of Humiliating Yourself, Of Losing Control Of The Whole Thing, Then Probably What You Are Doing Isn't Very Vital.

So, You See, It's A Real Chore For Me To Write A Book Review Because It's Like A Contest. It's Like I'm Writing That Book Review For Every Bad Book Reviewer I've Ever Known And It's A Way Of Saying [thrusts A Middle Finger Into The Air] This Is How You Ought To Do It. I Like To Rub Their Noses In It.

I Always Begin With A Character Or Characters, And Then Try To Think Up As Much Action For Them As Possible.

But I Often Think That So-called Glamorous People Are Just Very Busy People.

You Don't Want To Be Ungenerous Toward People Who Give You Prizes, But It Is Never The Social Or Political Message That Interests Me In A Novel. I Begin With An Interest In A Relationship, A Situation, A Character.

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.

I Have Always Believed That, In A Story, If Something Traumatic Or Calamitous Enough Happens To A Kid At A Formative Age, That Will Make Him Or Her The Adult They Become.

I Still Believe In Getting Married In Churches And Baptizing Children. I Go Through Those Motions.

Trending Author

Grover Cleveland

Category