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" 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. "
John Irving
Nice
Smell
Perfect
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" 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. "
John Irving
Ways
Afraid
Protect
" 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. "
John Irving
Being Alone
Alone
Imagination
" The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. "
John Irving
Building
Never
Architecture
" I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules. "
John Irving
Consequences
Rules
Behavior
" 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. "
John Irving
You
Dumb
People
" I lived five years in the Midwest, and I loved it. The people were so nice. The people were so open. "
John Irving
People
Loved
Nice
" So, I don't work in terms of real time. I don't work in a timely fashion. "
John Irving
Timely
Fashion
Real
" I don't think I've had a very interesting life, and I feel that is a great liberation. That gives me great freedom as a fiction writer. Nothing that happened holds any special tyranny over me. "
John Irving
Me
Freedom
Great
" When I feel like being a director, I write a novel. "
John Irving
Director
Write
Like
" There's no reason you shouldn't, as a writer, not be aware of the necessity to revise yourself constantly. "
John Irving
Necessity
You
Writer
" 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. "
John Irving
Explore
Story
Tell
" I suppose I try to look for those things where the world turns on you. It's every automobile accident, every accident at a party, you're having a good time until suddenly you're not. "
John Irving
Time
Having A Good Time
World
" One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are. "
John Irving
Empty
New
Page
" I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described. "
John Irving
Easy
Action
Find
" I sometimes think that what I do as a writer is make a kind of colouring book, where all the lines are there, and then you put in the colour. "
John Irving
You
Book
Kind
" 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. "
John Irving
Old
Think
Age
" 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. "
John Irving
Me
Connections
Story
" I believe that, in any novel of mine, the principal objective is the construction of the whole. "
John Irving
I Believe
Mine
Believe
" 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. "
John Irving
Myself
Time
Better
" As many times as I've seen 'The Merchant of Venice,' I always take Shylock's side. For all the hatred that guy is shown, he has a reason to hate in return. He's treated cruelly. And it's tragic that he learns to be intolerant because of what others do to him. "
John Irving
Hate
Hatred
Others
" Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is. "
John Irving
Story
Sometimes
Back
" I don't read anything electronically. I don't write electronically, either - except e-mails to my family and friends. I write in longhand. I have always written first drafts by hand, but I used to write subsequent drafts and insert pages on a typewriter. "
John Irving
First
Family
Friends
" Titles are important; I have them before I have books that belong to them. I have last chapters in my mind before I see first chapters, too. I usually begin with endings, with a sense of aftermath, of dust settling, of epilogue. "
John Irving
Last
Sense
See
" It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them. "
John Irving
Sympathy
People
Interesting
" 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
Go
" 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. "
John Irving
Follow
Analyst
Modern
" 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
Me
Good
Little Things
" I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have. "
John Irving
Kind
Try
Think
" Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. "
John Irving
Writing
Looking
Searching
" You can't learn everything you need to know legally. "
John Irving
You
Need
Legally