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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.

-John Irving

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Know The Story Before

John Irving

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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.

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Falling In Love

More From John Irving

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

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?

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

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

Life Is Serious But Art Is Fun!

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 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."

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

My Life Is A Reading List.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Human Sexuality Makes Farcical Our Most Serious Intentions.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Being Wrong About Important Things Is Exhausting.

Important Things

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.

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.

We Invent What We Love And What We Fear.

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 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 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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Good Habits Are Worth Being Fanatical About.

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

Misunderstanding

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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’m Not Afraid, But I’m Very Nervous.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Finding Yourself

Sell My Old Clothes - I'm Off To Heaven

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.

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

Freedom Of Choice

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.

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.

There's Nothing As Scary As The Future.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Rituals Are Comforting; Rituals Combat Loneliness.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I 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.

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.

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

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'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.

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

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

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

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

Being Reviewed Is Being Condescended To By Your Inferiors.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Lie, Of Course, Is More Interesting.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 Have A Very Poor Record At Multiple Choice Questions.

Multiple Choice

There Is No Straightforward Negotiation With A Four Year Old.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Keep Passing The Open Windows.

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

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

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

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.

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

Life Is An X-rated Soap Opera.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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?

You've Got To Get Obsessed And Stay Obsessed.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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!

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.

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

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

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Joaquin Phoenix

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