Quotes from John Irving

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.

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.

I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there.

I wasn't afraid of anything until I had a kid. Then I was terrified because immediately I could imagine a hundred ways in which I could not protect him.

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

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.

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.

Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes.

Life is an X-rated soap opera.

… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign; it is at least a form of being human.

My life as a writer consists of 1/8 talent and 7/8 discipline.

I have a very poor record at multiple choice questions.

There's no reason you should write any novel quickly.

I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through.

Of all the things you choose in life, you don't get to choose what your nightmares are. You don't pick them; they pick you.

Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

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.

A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

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.

You can't learn everything you need to know legally.

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.

I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.