Quotes by John Irving

With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what its like to live in someone elses shoes.

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.

Its not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess Im always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.

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

Im not writing non-fiction. I dont feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.

And I find - Im 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasnt diminished any. Thats the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.

“Dont forget this, too: Rumors arent interested in the unsensational story; rumors dont care whats true.”

“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 cant interfere with people you love any more than youre supposed to interfere with people you dont even know. And thats hard, ..., because you often feel like interfering -you want to be the one who makes the plans.”

“Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.”

“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.”

“When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost one, too,’’ they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)”

“When someone you love dies, and youre not expecting it, you dont 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 theres a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that shes gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”

“A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy”