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" Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel. "
John Irving
Still
Dark
Going
Related Quotes:
" Good habits are worth being fanatical about. "
John Irving
Good
Being
Good Habits
" 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. "
John Irving
Attention
Details
Meet
" 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
" You can't learn everything you need to know legally. "
John Irving
You
Need
Legally
" 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 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
" There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. "
John Irving
Things
Real World
Child
" I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels. "
John Irving
What If
Me
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
" 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
" If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product. "
John Irving
More
Product
Process
" Anybody can do research. The plotting of the novel, writing the ending before you write anything else, which I always do - I don't know that everybody can do that. That's the hard part. "
John Irving
Writing
You
Ending
" When I feel like being a director, I write a novel. "
John Irving
Director
Write
Like
" 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 have a very poor record at multiple choice questions. "
John Irving
Very
Poor
Questions
" I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story. "
John Irving
Story
Fan
Always
" I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey. "
John Irving
Ending
Words
Only
" When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. "
John Irving
Drawing
Writing
School
" 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
" 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. "
John Irving
Think
Interesting
Way
" I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station. "
John Irving
Will
Finish
I Am
" You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. "
John Irving
Get
You
Stay
" 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
" 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. "
John Irving
Damn
He
Background
" When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed. "
John Irving
Want
Love
Novel
" 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
" 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. "
John Irving
You
Long
Ignorance
" There's no reason you should write any novel quickly. "
John Irving
Write
Reason
You
" 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
" 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