Quotes About John Irving

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.

I love John Irving's stuff. It's that marriage of comedy and tragedy. It's really terrific.

I've always preferred writing in longhand. I've always written first drafts in longhand.

I love John Irving's stuff. It's that marriage of comedy and tragedy. It's really terrific.

Anything I've ever read by John Irving has been really well written.

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'm not a twentieth-century novelist, I'm not modern, and certainly not postmodern. I follow the form of the nineteenth-century novel; that was the century that produced the models of the form. I'm old-fashioned, a storyteller. I'm not an analyst, and I'm not an intellectual.

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.

Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.

Jenny Fields felt undone, the way only a person who has been careful can feel when confronted by a mistake.

Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee? He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,' I explained. Dan got out the dictionary , then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing at himself saying, That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous! And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was--a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die.

Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic, Richard told me. And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious.

Bill is a fiction writer, but he writes in the first-person voice in a style that is tell-all confessional; in fact, his fiction sounds as much like a memoir as he can make it sound.

But don't you see how your … opinions can be disturbing? It's very American—to have opinions as … strong as your opinions. It's very Canadian to distrust strong opinions." "I'm a Canadian," I said. "I've

Your disapproval is noted. It is legitimate. You are welcome to disapprove. But you are not welcome to be ignorant, to look the other way, to be unable to perform—should you change your mind.

But comedy is ingrained. A writer doesn't choose to be comic. You can choose a plot, or not to have one. You can choose your characters. But comedy is not a choice; it just comes out that way.

Good night you Kings of New England. You Princes of Maine. Who knows what book this quote comes from?

Like the rooftop dogs, they were lost souls—they were running wild, or they drifted around town like ghosts.

Greene's writing—he was the first modern writer I liked. Before Greene, my heroes were all novelists from the nineteenth century. Living in the nineteenth century can expand your loneliness; as a writer, it's lonely living there.

Well, that boy's voice," my grandmother told me, "that boy's voice could bring those mice back to life!" And it occurs to me now that Owen's voice was the voice of all those murdered mice, coming back to life—with a vengeance.

But miracles don't c-c-c-cause belief—real miracles don't m-m-m-make faith out of thin air; you have to already have faith in order to believe in real miracles.

In a novel, your foremost objective isn't to offend no one," the

Good evening, knocked-up faculty daughter. How are you managing now, you smelly little slut?

for a novelist, in Candy's opinion, was also a kind of impostor doctor, but a good doctor nonetheless.