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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.

-John Irving

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I Am Not Attracted

John Irving

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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.

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If You Feel Strongly About People Having Abortions, Don't Have One. But We Are A Country - Usa - That Likes To Be Punitive. We Want To Restrict. It Is A Kind Of Religious Fervor Run Amuck.

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?

I Certainly Think Obama Is The Most Hopeful President I've Seen In The Country Since John Kennedy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She Was An Expert At The Art Of Sudden Appearance.

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

A Personal Injustice Is Stronger Motivation Than Any Instinct For Philanthropy.

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.

Here In St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch Wrote, “ I Have Been Given The Choice Of Playing God Or Leaving Practically Everything Up To Chance. It Is My Experience That Practically Everything Is Left Up To Chance Much Of The Time; Men Who Believe In Good And Evil, And Who Believe That Good Should Win, Should Watch For Those Moments When It Is Possible To Play God – We Should Seize Those Moments. There Won’t Be May

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

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.

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.

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 Former Stewardess Glared At Her Ex-pilot Husband As If He Had Been Speaking, And Thinking, In The Absence Of Sufficient Oxygen.

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.

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

If You Are Lucky Enough To Find A Way Of Life You Love, You Have To Find The Courage To Live It.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It Seems To Me That People Who Don’t Learn As Easily As Others Suffer From A Kind Of Learning Disability—there Is Something Different About The Way They Comprehend Unfamiliar Material—but I Fail To See How This Disability Is Improved By Psychiatric Consultation. What Seems To Be Lacking Is A Technical Ability That Those Of Us Called ‘good Students’ Are Born With. Someone Should Concretely Study These Skills And Teach Them. What Does A Shrink Have To Do With The Process?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Imagining Something Is Better Than Remembering Something.

Along The (writing) Way Accidents Happen, Detours Get Taken... But These Are Not "divine" Accidents; I Don't Believe In Those. I Believe You Have Constructive Accidents En Route Through A Novel Only Because You Have Mapped A Clear Way. If You Have Confidence That You Have A Clear Direction To Take, You Always Have Confidence To Explore Other Ways; If They Prove To Be Mere Digressions, You'll Recognize That And Make The Necessary Revisions. The More You Know About A Book, The Freer You Can Be To Fool Around. The Less You Know, The Tighter You Get.

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

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

Homer And Candy Passed By The Empty And Brightly Lit Dispensary; They Peeked Into Nurse Angela's Empty Office. Homer Knew Better Than To Peek Into The Delivery Room When The Light Was On. From The Dormitory, They Could Hear Dr. Larch's Reading Voice. Although Candy Held Tightly To His Hand, Homer Was Inclined To Hurry - In Order Not To Miss The Bedtime Story.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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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

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I Thought Some Of The Stories Were Neat; I Liked Some Of The Liturgy And Some Of The Songs. If You're A Writer You Have Some Inclination To Pay Attention. I Didn't Just Tune It Out And Think About Baseball. So, It Had An Effect On Me.

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

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

I Think That Was When The Headmaster Realized He Had Lost; He Realized Then That He Was Finished. Because, What Could He Do? Was He Going To Tell Us To Stop Praying? We Kept Our Heads Bowed; And We Kept Praying. Even As Awkward As He Was, The Rev. Mr. Merrill Had Made It Clear To Us That There Was No End To Praying For Owen Meany.

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We Invent What We Love And What We Fear.

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

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.

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Like Being Alone

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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.

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The Way You Define Yourself As A Writer Is That You Write Every Time You Have A Free Minute. If You Didn't Behave That Way You Would Never Do Anything.

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.

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

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 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.

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

Nothing Bears Out In Practice What It Promises Incipiently.

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.

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

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.

Ambition Robs You Of Your Childhood. The Moment You Want To Become An Adult—in Any Way—something In Your Childhood Dies.

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

Freedom Of Choice

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

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

Freedom Of Religion

The Object Of War Is To Survive It.

…there Is No Nakedness That Compares To Being Naked In Front Of Someone For The First Time.

Sell My Old Clothes - I'm Off To Heaven

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

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

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 Have Learned That The Consequences Of Our Past Actions Are Always Interesting; I Have Learned To View The Present With A Forward-looking Eye.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Life Forces Enough Final Decisions On Us. We Should Have The Sense To Avoid As Many Of The Unnecessary Ones As We Can.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Rituals Are Comforting; Rituals Combat Loneliness.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I Write Very Quickly; I Rewrite Very Slowly. It Takes Me Nearly As Long To Rewrite A Book As It Does To Get The First Draft.

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

When I Finally Write The First Sentence, I Want To Know Everything That Happens, So That I Am Not Inventing The Story As I Write It - Rather, I Am Remembering A Story That Has Already Happened.

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."

It Doesn't Really Matter Who Said It - It's So Obviously True. Before You Can Write Anything, You Have To Notice Something.

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.

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.

There Is No Straightforward Negotiation With A Four Year Old.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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."

The Ability To See The Future Can Be A Burden, And The Younger You Are And The More Isolated You Feel, Maybe The More Of A Burden It Is.

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.

No Touching Baby Jesus.” “but We’re His Parents!” Proclaimed Mary Beth, Who Was Being Generous To Include Poor Joseph Under This Appellation. “mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin Said, “if You Touch The Baby Jesus, I’m Putting You In A Cow Costume.

Life Is Serious But Art Is Fun!

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Have No Respect For The Right-to-life Position. But When You Legislate Personal Belief, You're In Violation Of Freedom Of Religion. The Catholic Church May Espouse Its Opinion On Abortion To The Members Of Its Congregation. But They Are In Violation Of Separation Of Church And State When They Try To Proselytize Their Abortion Politics On People Who Are Not Catholics.

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.

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

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

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

I Have A Very Poor Record At Multiple Choice Questions.

Multiple Choice

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

Self-hatred Is Worse Than Loneliness.

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.

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

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

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.

Children Are Most Impressed With The Importance Of A Moment When They Witness A Parent Breaking The Parents' Own Rule.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

It 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.

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

People Regard Art Too Highly, And History Not Enough

So My Grandmother Was Not Without Humanity. And If She Wore Cocktail Dresses When She Labored In The Garden, They Were Cocktail Dresses She No Longer Intended To Wear To Cocktail Parties. Even In Her Rose Garden She Did Not Want To Appear Underdressed. If The Dresses Got Too Dirty From Gardening, She Threw Them Out. When My Mother Suggested To Her That She Might Have Them Cleaned, My Grandmother Said, "what? And Have Those People At The Cleaners What I Was Doing In A Dress To Make It That Dirty?" From My Grandmother I Learned That Logic Is Relative.

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

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