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Ever Since The Christmas Of 1953, I Have Felt That The Yuletide Is A Special Hell For Those Families Who Have Suffered Any Loss Or Who Must Admit To Any Imperfection; The So-called Spirit Of Giving Can Be As Greedy As Receiving-christmas Is Our Time To Be Aware Of What We Lack, Of Who's Not Home.

-John Irving

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Ever Since The Christmas

John Irving

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Ever Since The Christmas Of 1953, I Have Felt That The Yuletide Is A Special Hell For Those Families Who Have Suffered Any Loss Or Who Must Admit To Any Imperfection; The So-called Spirit Of Giving Can Be As Greedy As Receiving-christmas Is Our Time To Be Aware Of What We Lack, Of Who's Not Home.

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The Book Works Better If I Know Everything I Can About The Ending. Not Just What Happens, But How It Happens And What The Language Is; Not Just The Last Sentence, But Enough Of The Sentences Surrounding That Last Sentence To Know What The Tone Of Voice Is. I Imagined It As Something Almost Musical. Then You Are Writing Toward Something; You Know The Sound Of Your Voice At The End Of The Story. That's How You Want To Sound In Those Final Sentences: The Degree That It Is Uplifting Or Not, The Degree That It Is Melancholic Or Not.

Writing A Novel Is Actually Searching For Victims. As I Write I Keep Looking For Casualties. The Stories Uncover The Casualties.

This Was Not Of The Nature Of A Christlike Lesson For Owen Meany To Learn, As He Lay In The Manger, That Someone You Hate Can Give You A Hard-on.

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.

Safer Than We Are.” I Told Franny. “safer Than Love.” “let Me Tell Ya Kid,” Franny Said To Me, Squeezing My Hand. “everything’s Safer Than Love.

Everybody Dies … The Thing Is, To Have A Life Before We Die.

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.

Nothing Moves At The Hotel New Hampshire! We're Screwed Down Here-for Life!

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

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

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.

Rituals Are Comforting; Rituals Combat Loneliness.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Life Is An X-rated Soap Opera.

But Good Friends Are Nothing To Each Other If They Are Not Supportive.

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.

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

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

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

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

It's My Experience That Very Few Writers, Young Or Old, Are Really Seeking Advice When They Give Out Their Work To Be Read. They Want Support; They Want Someone To Say, "good Job."

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 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.

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?

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

My Brain Is Sending Poison To My Heart.

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.

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

When You Legislate Personal Belief, You're In Violation Of Freedom Of Religion.

Freedom Of Religion

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

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.

The Object Of War Is To Survive It.

So, I Don't Work In Terms Of Real Time. I Don't Work In A Timely Fashion.

Grown-ups Shouldn’t Finish Books They’re Not Enjoying. When You’re No Longer A Child, And You No Longer Live At Home, You Don’t Have To Finish Everything On Your Plate. One Reward Of Leaving School Is That You Don’t Have To Finish Books You Don’t Like.

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.

The Desire To Never Leave Your Side, The Desire To Never See You Again. The Desire To See Your Face Asleep On The Pillow Beside My Face And To See Your Eyes Open In The Morning When I Lie Next To You—just Watching You, Waiting For You To Wake Up.

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!

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.

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I Have A Very Poor Record At Multiple Choice Questions.

Multiple Choice

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.

It´s Natural To Want Someone You Love To Do What You Want, Or What You Think Would Be Good For Them, But You Have To Let Everything Happen To Them. You Can't Interfere With People You Love Any More Than You're Supposed To Interfere With People You Don't Even Know. And That's Hard, ..., Because You Often Feel Like Interfering -you Want To Be The One Who Makes The Plans.

I’m Not Afraid, But I’m Very Nervous.

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

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Human Sexuality Makes Farcical Our Most Serious Intentions.

I Have A Friend Who Says That Reviewers Are The Tickbirds Of The Literary Rhinoceros-but He Is Being Kind. Tickbirds Perform A Valuable Service To The Rhino And The Rhino Hardly Notices The Birds.

Crazy People Made Him Crazy. It Was As If He Personally Resented Them Giving Into Madness - In Part, Because He So Frequently Labored To Behave Sanely. When Some People Gave Up The Labor Of Sanity, Or Failed At It, Garp Suspected Them Of Not Trying Hard Enough.

Ever Since The Christmas Of 1953, I Have Felt That The Yuletide Is A Special Hell For Those Families Who Have Suffered Any Loss Or Who Must Admit To Any Imperfection; The So-called Spirit Of Giving Can Be As Greedy As Receiving-christmas Is Our Time To Be Aware Of What We Lack, Of Who's Not Home.

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

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

We Don't Always Have A Choice How We Get To Know One Another. Sometimes, People Fall Into Our Lives Cleanly--as If Out Of The Sky, Or As If There Were A Direct Flight From Heaven To Earth--the Same Sudden Way We Lose People, Who Once Seemed They Would Always Be Part Of Our Lives

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You Can't Learn Everything You Need To Know Legally.

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

Being Wrong About Important Things Is Exhausting.

Important Things

No One Could Have Fathomed What A Life He'd Led, For It Was Chiefly A Life Lived In His Mind.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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Owen Meany Believed That “coincidence” Was A Stupid, Shallow Refuge Sought By Stupid, Shallow People Who Were Unable To Accept The Fact That Their Lives Were Shaped By A Terrifying And Awesome Design – More Powerful And Unstoppable Than The Yankee Flyer. (a Train)

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

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

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

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.

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

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Being Afraid You'll Look Like A Coward Is The Worst Reason For Doing Anything.

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It Happens To Many Teenagers-that Moment When You Feel Full Of Resentment Or Distrust For Those Adults You Once Loved Unquestioningly.

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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.

Just When You Begin Thinking Of Yourself As Memorable, You Run Into Someone Who Can't Even Remember Having Met You

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 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.

Imagining Something Is Better Than Remembering Something.

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.

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 Believe A Novel Should Be As Complicated And Involved As You're Capable Of Making It.

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.

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

If You Feel Strongly About People Having Abortions, Don't Have One.

It's Because Even A Good Man Can't Always Be Right, That We Need ... Rules.

Watch Out For People Who Call Themselves Religious; Make Sure You Know What They Mean - Make Sure They Know What They Mean!

This Is What Self-centered Religion Does To Us: It Allows Us To Use It To Further Our Own Ends.

A Truly Happy Woman Drives Some Men And Almost Every Other Woman Absolutely Crazy

People Regard Art Too Highly, And History Not Enough

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.

I'm Not A Movie Person. They're Collaborations Of The Worst Kind. You Must Compromise Yourself To Many Interests That Are Venal And Crass And Do Not Have Your Best Interests At Heart.

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.

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.

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.

Human Beings Are Remarkable - At What We Can Learn To Live With. If We Couldn't Get Strong From What We Lose, And What We Miss, And What We Want And Can't Have, Then We Couldn't Ever Get Strong Enough, Could We? What Else Makes Us Strong?

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

Your Memory Is A Monster; You Forget - It Doesn't. It Simply Files Things Away. It Keeps Things For You, Or Hides Things From You - And Summons Them To Your Recall With A Will Of Its Own. You Think You Have A Memory; But It Has You!

In Our Hearts... There Must Abide Some Pity For Those People Who Have Always Felt Themselves To Be Separate From Even Their Most Familiar Surroundings, Those People Who Either Are Foreigners Or Who Suffer A Singular Point Of View That Makes Them Feel As If They’re Foreigners - Even In Their Native Lands. In Our Hearts... There Also Abides A Certain Suspicion That Such People Need To Feel Set Apart From Their Society. But People Who Initiate Loneliness Are No Less Lonely Than Those Who Are Suddenly Surprised By Loneliness, Nor Are They Undeserving Of Our Pity.

It Is Hard Work And Great Art To Make Life Not So Serious.

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.

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

The Main Character And The Most Important Character Are Not Always The Same Person - You Have To Know The Difference.

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

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.

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.

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

I Had Been A Student In Vienna, And One Of The Neat Little Things I Had Found Out Was About That Zoo. It Was A Good Debut Novel For Me To Have Published. I Was 26 Or 27 When It Was Published. I Already Had A Kid And Would Soon Have A Second.

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.

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.

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

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

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 Characters In My Novels, From The Very First One, Are Always On Some Quixotic Effort Of Attempting To Control Something That Is Uncontrollable - Some Element Of The World That Is Essentially Random And Out Of Control.

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!

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

I Try To See The Whole Woman,' Eddie Said To Hannah. 'of Course I Recognize That She's Old, But There Are Photographs - Or The Equivalent Of Photographs In One's Imagination Of Anyone's Life. A Whole Life, I Mean. I Can Picture Her When She Was Much Younger Than I Am - Because There Are Always Gestures And Expressions That Are Ingrained, Ageless. An Old Woman Doesn't See Herself As An Old Woman, And Neither Do I. I Try To See Her Her Whole Life In Her. There's Something So Moving About Someone's Whole Life.

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.

I 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.

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.

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.

Just Because You're Sober, Don't Think You're A Good Driver, Cookie.

Almost Everyone Is Dying To Leave Home, Eventually; And Almost Everyone Needs To.

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."

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

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 Was Brought Up In A Community, In A Family That Valued Such Things As Good Manners, And I Still Do.

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.

I've Always Been A Fan Of The 19th Century Novel, Of The Novel That Is Plotted, Character-driven, And Where The Passage Of Time Is Almost As Central To The Novel As A Major Minor Character, The Passage Of Time And Its Effect On The Characters In The Story.

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.

You Live Your Life At The Time You Live It -- You Don't Have Much Of An Overview When What's Happening To You Is Still Happening.

I Begin With An Interest In A Relationship, A Situation, A Character.

Half My Life Is An Act Of Revision; More Than Half The Act Is Performed With Small Changes.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Life Is Serious But Art Is Fun!

Keep Passing The Open Windows.

Half My Life Is An Act Of Revision.

You Can Give Yourself A Headache Trying To Decipher The Tattoos On A Naked Man Who’s Leaping Up And Down On A Bed.

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

Self-hatred Is Worse Than Loneliness.

...i Suddenly Realized What Small Towns Are. They Are Places Where You Grow Up With The Peculiar-you Live Next Door To The Strange And The Unlikely For So Long That Everything And Everyone Become Commonplace.

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

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

I Have Stood Aside To See The Phantoms Of Those Days Go By Me. They Are Gone, And I Resume The Journey Of My Story.’ (david Copperfield) “but 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 Detect—and Their Meaning Was Unknown—but They Were There.

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.

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

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

Don't Forget This, Too: Rumors Aren't Interested In The Unsensational Story; Rumors Don't Care What's True.

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

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

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

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!

There's Nothing As Scary As The Future.

She Was An Expert At The Art Of Sudden Appearance.

When People Say That German Or Any Other Language Is Romantic... All They Really Mean Is That They've Enjoyed A Past In The Language

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

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

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

He Had In Abundance Youth’s Most Dangerous Qualities: Optimism And Relentlessness. He Would Risk Everything He Had To Fly The Plane That Could Carry The Bomb Within Him.

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

More Than A Half, Maybe As Much As Two-thirds Of My Life As A Writer Is Rewriting. I Wouldn't Say I Have A Talent That's Special. It Strikes Me That I Have An Unusual Kind Of Stamina.

Never Confuse Faith, Or Belief — Of Any Kind — With Something Even Remotely Intellectual.

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.

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.

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

Sigmund Freud Was A Novelist With A Scientific Background. He Just Didn't Know He Was A Novelist. All Those Damn Psychiatrists After Him, They Didn't Know He Was A Novelist Either.

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

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

When Writing A Novel, I'm Not Smart Enough To Know How To Foreshadow Something If I Don't Know What It Is.

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.

We Are Formed By What We Desire

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.

The Unspoken Factor Is Love. The Reason I Can Work So Hard At My Writing Is That It's Not Work For Me.

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

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.

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.

It Is An Important Distinction To Note That She Looked Not Only As If She Had Taken Good Care Of Herself, But That She Had Good Reason To Have Done So. (...) She Looked To Be In Such Total Possession Of Her Life That Only The Most Confident Men Could Continue To Look At Her If She Looked Back At Them. Even In Bus Stations, She Was A Woman Who Was Stared At Only Until She Looked Back.

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.

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

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!

Thinking Of You

Our Memory Is A Monster; You Forget It - It Does Not.

There Is No Straightforward Negotiation With A Four Year Old.

Whereas She Wished More Of The Population Were Better Educated, She Also Believed That Education Was Largely Wasted On The Majority Of The People She Met.

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.

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Philip Guedalla

George Jean Nathan

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