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

-John Irving

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I've Always Been Interested

John Irving

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

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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.

Being Reviewed Is Being Condescended To By Your Inferiors.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

She Was An Expert At The Art Of Sudden Appearance.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Rituals Are Comforting; Rituals Combat Loneliness.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Life Is An X-rated Soap Opera.

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?

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.

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’m Not Afraid, But I’m Very Nervous.

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

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

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

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 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. 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.

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.

There Is No Straightforward Negotiation With A Four Year Old.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

So We Dream On. Thus We Invent Our Lives. We Give Ourselves A Sainted Mother, We Make Our Father A Hero; And Someone’s Older Brother And Someone’s Older Sister – They Become Our Heroes Too. We Invent What We Love And What We Fear. There Is Always A Brave Lost Brother – And A Little Lost Sister, Too. We Dream On And On: The Best Hotel, The Perfect Family, The Resort Life. And Our Dreams Escape Us Almost As Vividly As We Can Imagine Them.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Lie, Of Course, Is More Interesting.

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 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.

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.

You've Got To Get Obsessed And Stay Obsessed.

My Brain Is Sending Poison To My Heart.

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

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.

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

Life Is Serious But Art Is Fun!

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

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

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

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.

Imagining Something Is Better Than Remembering Something.

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!

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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

Finding Yourself

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Misunderstanding

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.

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

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.

And Never Forget, There Is Memory.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

What Was Even More Germane Was My Study Of The History Of Religion. It Was One Of The Few Things In School I Was Fascinated By.

You 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.

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.

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 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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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."

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.

I Have A Very Poor Record At Multiple Choice Questions.

Multiple Choice

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.

Half My Life Is An Act Of Revision.

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

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

We Are Formed By What We Desire

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

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

Sell My Old Clothes - I'm Off To Heaven

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I'm A Worst-case Scenario Person. I'm Only Interested In A Story Because I Kind Of Go, Like A Magnet, To The Worst Thing That Can Happen.

Worst Case Scenario

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Good Habits Are Worth Being Fanatical About.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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