Background Image

...

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.

-John Irving

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Think Now That

John Irving

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From John Irving

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

Half My Life Is An Act Of Revision.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Lie, Of Course, Is More Interesting.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

We Invent What We Love And What We Fear.

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.

I’m Not Afraid, But I’m Very Nervous.

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

...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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

Good Habits Are Worth Being Fanatical About.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Object Of War Is To Survive It.

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)

They Were Involved In That Awkward Procedure Of Getting To Unknow Each Other.

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 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.

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

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

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

Keep Passing The Open Windows.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I Will Tell You What Is My Overriding Perception Of The Last Twenty Years: That We Are A Civilization Careening Toward A Succession Of Anticlimaxes – Toward An Infinity Of Unsatisfying, And Disagreeable Endings.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Misunderstanding

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

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

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

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.

There's Nothing As Scary As The Future.

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 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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Life Is Serious But Art Is Fun!

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

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

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Everyone Has A Right To Be A Little Happy, Asshole.

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.

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.

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

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.

Human Sexuality Makes Farcical Our Most Serious Intentions.

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.

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

The Powerful Wind Swept His Hair Away From His Face; He Leaned His Chest Into The Wind, As If He Stood On The Deck Of A Ship Heading Into The Wind, Slicing Through The Waves Of An Ocean He’d Not Yet Seen.

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.

O God — Please Give Him Back! I Shall Keep Asking You.

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.

A Sentence Boiled In Her, But She Could Not Yet See It Clearly.

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

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.

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

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

My Brain Is Sending Poison To My Heart.

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.

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.

Imagining Something Is Better Than Remembering Something.

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.

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

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

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.

Life," Garp Wrote, "is Sadly Not Structured Like A Good Old-fashioned Novel. Instead An End Occurs When Those Who Are Meant To Peter Out Have Petered Out. All That Is Left Is Memory. But Even A Nihilist Has Memory.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Take People Very Seriously. People Are All I Take Seriously, In Fact. Therefore, I Have Nothing But Sympathy For How People Behave - And Nothing But Laughter To Console Them With.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She Was An Expert At The Art Of Sudden Appearance.

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!

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

Being Wrong About Important Things Is Exhausting.

Important Things

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

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.

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

Rituals Are Comforting; Rituals Combat Loneliness.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Freedom Of Religion

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

And Never Forget, There Is Memory.

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

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

Writing Is Hard. I Learned How To Work Hard From Wrestling, Not English Courses.

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 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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Trending Author

Christian Lacroix

Alonzo Mourning

Category