22 Quotes by John Irving about Writing

  • Author John Irving
  • Quote

    You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.

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  • Author John Irving
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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.

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  • Author John Irving
  • Quote

    Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

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  • Author John Irving
  • Quote

    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.

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  • Author John Irving
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    I write very quickly; I rewrite very slowly. It takes me nearly as long to rewrite a book as it does to get the first draft.

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  • Author John Irving
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    When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.

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  • Author John Irving
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    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.

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  • Author John Irving
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    It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.

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  • Author John Irving
  • Quote

    I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.

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