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" You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. "
John Irving
Get
You
Stay
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" I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around. "
John Irving
Child
Father
Small
" 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. "
John Irving
Me
Writing
Long
" 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
" Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you! "
John Irving
Forget
You
Think
" 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
" The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. "
John Irving
Building
Never
Architecture
" 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
" The principal event of my childhood was that no adult in my family would tell me who my father was. "
John Irving
Father
Family
Childhood
" I never wanted my kids to feel I was more interested in anything I was doing than I was in them. "
John Irving
Feel
Anything
Doing
" 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. "
John Irving
Better
Business
Skin
" More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina. "
John Irving
Say
My Life
Talent
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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. "
John Irving
Simple
Know
Done
" I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs. "
John Irving
Thought
Church
Family
" I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one day here and the next day not; a sense anything could happen. Then, all of a sudden, my mother met my stepfather, and her life became happier, and my life changed, my name changed. "
John Irving
Me
My Life
Mother
" 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. "
John Irving
Back
You
Wrestling
" You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that interests me in a novel. I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character. "
John Irving
Relationship
You
Character
" 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 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
" 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
" 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 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
" 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. "
John Irving
You
Way
Direction
" 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 have a very poor record at multiple choice questions. "
John Irving
Very
Poor
Questions
" 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
" 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