Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

John Irving

Believe

Story

Time

" Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel. "

" 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. "

John Irving

Good

Little Things

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I never wanted my kids to feel I was more interested in anything I was doing than I was in them. "

" You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. "

" There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. "

" 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. "

" When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed. "

" If you're still wondering about details - how am I going to get these two to meet, or whatever - when you're writing, you can't pay proper attention to the sentences themselves. "

" I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin. "

" Half my life is an act of revision. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have. "

" I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels. "

John Irving

What If

Think

" So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion. "

" To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense. "

" 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. "

" 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 lived five years in the Midwest, and I loved it. The people were so nice. The people were so open. "

" I had a particular affinity for wrestling, and it did have a lot to do with being small and being combative - and being angry. And when you're small and you don't back down, you get in a lot of fights. "

" I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed. "

John Irving

Dog

Early

" 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. "