{"author":"John Irving","author_id":"John+Irving","total_quotes":113,"quotes":[{"text":"Half my life is an act of revision.","author":"John Irving","tags":["drama","humour"],"id":6715,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough. ","author":"John Irving","tags":["insanity","sanity"],"id":10394,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.","author":"John Irving","tags":["autobiographical","critics","first-person-narrative","writing-life"],"id":12074,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.","author":"John Irving","tags":["christmas","grief","loss"],"id":14109,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.","author":"John Irving","tags":["literature"],"id":20714,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"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 ei.","author":"John Irving","tags":["freud","novelists","psychiatrists","science","sigmund-freud"],"id":24124,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"IT (The country) IS HEADED TOWARD OVERSIMPLIFICATION. YOU WANT TO SEE A PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE? TURN ON ANY TELEVISION ON ANY SUNDAY MORNING - FIND ONE OF THOSE HOLY ROLLERS: THAT'S HIM, THAT'S THE NEW MISTER PRESIDENT! AND DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE FUTURE OF ALL THOSE KIDS WHO ARE GOING TO FALL IN THE CRACKS OF THIS GREAT, BIG, SLOPPY SOCIETY OF OURS? I JUST MET HIM; HE'S A TALL, SKINNY, FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY NAMED 'DICK.' HE'S PRETTY SCARY. WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM IS NOT UNLIKE WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE TV EVANGELIST - OUR FUTURE PRESIDENT. WHAT'S WRONG WITH BOTH OF THEM IS THAT THEY'RE SO SURE THEY'RE RIGHT! THAT'S PRETTY SCARY - THE FUTURE, I THINK, IS PRETTY SCARY.","author":"John Irving","tags":["future-generations","future-prediction","humor","politicians","politics","president","stupidity"],"id":31429,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.","author":"John Irving","tags":["friends","learning","lesson","life","love"],"id":32127,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"In Ruth's view, they looked 'like a couple' because they seemed to possess some terrible secret between them - they appeared stricken with remorse when they saw her. Only a novelist could ever imagine such nonsense. (In part, it was because of her perverse ability to imagine anything that in this instance Ruth failed to imagine the obvious).","author":"John Irving","tags":["humor","imagination","writers"],"id":49537,"author_id":"John+Irving"},{"text":"MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR. AT LEAST, YOU GET TO READ STUFF THAT'S WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO CAN WRITE! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE - TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY!; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS!","author":"John Irving","tags":["humor","inspirational-attitude"],"id":49541,"author_id":"John+Irving"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":113,"pages":12,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}