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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.

-John Irving

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You Don't Want To

John Irving

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Self-hatred Is Worse Than Loneliness.

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.

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

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

And Never Forget, There Is Memory.

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.

We Are Formed By What We Desire

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.

Imagining Something Is Better Than Remembering Something.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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)

I Have No Respect For The Right-to-life Position, Though I Have Every Respect For An Individual Who Says, "i Could Never Have That Procedure, I Could Never See A Film Or Read A Book About That Procedure." It Doesn't Bother Me If People Feel That Way.

I 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Being Wrong About Important Things Is Exhausting.

Important Things

You Can Learn A Lot From Your Lovers, But-for The Most Part-you Get To Keep Your Friends Longer, And You Learn More From Them.

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.

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.

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.

Life Is Serious But Art Is Fun!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

Life Is An X-rated Soap Opera.

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

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

Being Reviewed Is Being Condescended To By Your Inferiors.

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 Nothing As Scary As The Future.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

All His Life He Would Hold This Moment As Exemplary Of What Love Was. It Was Not Wanting Anything More, Nor Was It Expecting People To Exceed What They Had Just Accomplished; It Was Simply Feeling So Complete.

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

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

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.

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

Human Sexuality Makes Farcical Our Most Serious Intentions.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Lie, Of Course, Is More Interesting.

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

Misunderstanding

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

When Time Passes, It's The People Who Knew You Whom You Want To See; They're The Ones You Can Talk To. When Enough Time Passes, What's It Matter What They Did To You?

It'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."

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Have A Very Poor Record At Multiple Choice Questions.

Multiple Choice

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.

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.

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

Sell My Old Clothes - I'm Off To Heaven

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.

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

I'm Not At All Contemporary, Not Even Modern, And The Fact That I Would Be So Quaintly Attracted To That Wrestling Rule Makes Me, I Suppose, Seem All The More Old-fashioned. I Believe In Rules Of Behavior, And I'm Quite Interested In Stories About The Consequences Of Breaking Those Rules.

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

And I Find - I'm 63, And My Capacity To Be By Myself And Just Spend Time By Myself Hasn't Diminished Any. That's The Necessary Part Of Being A Writer, You Better Like Being Alone.

Like Being Alone

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.

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

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.

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'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

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

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.

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

Freedom Of Religion

If You Don't Feel That You Are Possibly On The Edge Of Humiliating Yourself, Of Losing Control Of The Whole Thing, Then Probably What You Are Doing Isn't Very Vital.

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

I Have A Process That I Seem To Always, To Some Degree, As A Writer, Adhere To, But I Certainly Have Never Imposed The Way I Write A Novel On My Students. When I Had Students, I Never Said, "you Should Never Start Writing A Novel Until You Have The Last Sentence." I Never Did That, And I Wouldn't Do It Now, But People Now Seem So Interested In The Process [of Writing Fiction] That I Have To Constantly Make It Clear When I Describe Mine That I'm Not Being Prescriptive. I'm Not Proselytizing.

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

Finding Yourself

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

We Invent What We Love And What We Fear.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Good Habits Are Worth Being Fanatical About.

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.

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

And When You Love A Book, Commit One Glorious Sentence Of It-perhaps Your Favorite Sentence-to Memory. That Way You Won't Forget The Language Of The Story That Moved You To Tears.

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

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

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

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

...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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

People Regard Art Too Highly, And History Not Enough

Half My Life Is An Act Of Revision.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

If You Asked Me One Day, I Might Say, "well, Sometimes I Feel A Little Bit Religious." If You Asked Me Another Day, I'd Just Say Flat Out, "no."

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

My Life Is A Reading List.

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Karl Liebknecht

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