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807a523
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People regard art too highly, and history not enough
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history
common-sense
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John Irving |
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a17e7ac
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By '95 - in New York, alone - more Americans had died of AIDS than were killed in Vietnam.
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John Irving |
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54d43c0
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DREAMS EDIT THEMSELVES; DREAMS are ruthless with details. Common sense does not dictate what remains, or is not included, in a dream. A two-minute dream can feel like forever.
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John Irving |
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4c8e3bb
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Garp discovered that when you are writing something, everything seems related to everything else.
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John Irving |
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9f879d3
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Franny's Hollywood name, her acting name, is one you know. This is our family's story, and it's inappropriate for me to use Franny's stage name - but I know that you know her. Franny is the one you always desire. She is the best one, even when she's the villain; she always the real hero, even when she dies, even when she dies for love - or worse, for war. She's the most beautiful, the most unapproachable, but the most vulnerable too, someho..
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John Irving |
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0fcfada
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His resolve was blown as quickly as the rest of him.
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John Irving |
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9aa4073
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Why do you guys want to take all the mystery away? Isn't the mystery an exciting part of sex?
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John Irving |
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54825bd
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The point was - he wasn't . It was as if he'd forgotten how! Jack still knew his lines, but he was out of character... Jack had acting. He was just Jack Burns - the Jack Burns at last.
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John Irving |
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3b24249
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Isn't it amazing? The Americans have so many good afterthoughts!
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John Irving |
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acff4f8
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It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable) behavior of male writers; it would surely benefit me, as a writer, if I had the courage to seek out more of the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant myself. But women who seek out such things are made to feel ashamed, or else they sound stridently ridiculous in defending themselves -- as if they're braggin..
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sex
writing-life
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John Irving |
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f5cff5a
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From Hester's bedroom--even though the door was closed--we could hear her breathing; Hester's breathing, when she'd been drinking, was something between a snore and a moan. "Why does she drink so much?" I asked Owen. "HESTER'S AHEAD OF HER TIME," he said. "What's that mean?" I asked him. "Do we have a generation of drunks to look forward to?" "WE HAVE A GENERATION OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ANGRY TO LOOK FORWARD TO," Owen said. "AND MAYBE TWO GENERA..
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John Irving |
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59a30d1
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Most men don't mind if another woman watches. It's the women who are watching who don't want to be seen.
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John Irving |
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089e695
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The chairman of the state board of medical examiners was a retired physician who thought that President Teddy Roosevelt was the only other man in the world besides himself who had not been made from a banana.
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John Irving |
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ce5fa08
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Ruth thought of a novel as a great, untidy house, a disorderly mansion; her job was to make the place fit to live in, to give it at least the semblance of order. Only when she wrote was she unafraid.
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John Irving |
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e75c1aa
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Once again, Jack reached for her hand. It was the only thing he knew how to do. As it would turn out, it was about the only thing he reall knew.
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John Irving |
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345910a
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the single ingredient in American literature that distinguishes it from other literatures of the world is a kind of giddy, illogical hopefulness. It is quite technically sophisticated while remaining ideologically naive.
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hopeful
illogical
naive
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John Irving |
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5d289a1
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It surprised him that was the one who looked stricken with fear, as if she were a prisoner in the passenger seat and saw the fast-approaching collision seconds before the drive could react to it. Bonnie pinched her lower lip with her teeth and stared at Jack as if she were transfixed--as if were the upcoming accident, and, even though she saw him coming, she couldn't turn away.
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John Irving |
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6e66d75
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You are my work of art," Wilbur Larch told Homer Wells. "Everything else has just been a job. I don't know if you've got a work of art in you," Larch concluded in his letter to Homer, "but I know what your job is,and you know what it is, too."
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John Irving |
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3cf53ca
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And when Dr. Daruwalla breathed in her dangerous aroma, he thought he'd at last identified the smell of sex, which struck him as an earthy commingling of death and flowers
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John Irving |
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a84e0c8
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woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.
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John Irving |
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690a679
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There was no solution," Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina, "but the universal solution that life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day--that is forget oneself."
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John Irving |
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1ac1461
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He felt fortunate to be with Helen; she had her own ambitions and he could not manipulate here.
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John Irving |
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c57e29b
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IF YOU ABOLISH THE DRAFT," said Owen Meany, "MOST AMERICANS WILL SIMPLY STOP CARING WHAT WE'RE DOING IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD" --
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detached
oblivious
prescient
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John Irving |
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7a09516
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Behind every journey is a reason,
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John Irving |
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7ba78b7
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I'm sure I'll have more to say about the penis word.
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John Irving |
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9c51b51
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There's nothing so confusing as finding out that you don't know someone you thought you knew.
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John Irving |
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9b2e871
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If you think you are capable of living without writing, do not write,
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John Irving |
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2ec363c
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Dr. Gingrich and Mrs. Goodhall had prevailed upon the board of trustees; the board had requested that Larch comply with Dr. Gingrich's recommendation of a 'follow-up report' on the status of each orphan's success (or failure) in each foster home. If this added paperwork was too tedious for Dr. Larch, the board recommended that Larch take Mrs. Goodhall's suggestion and accept an administrative assistant. Don't I have enough history to attend..
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John Irving |
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cd95ab3
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That was the night he got up and went to the boys' division; perhaps he was looking for his history in the big room where all the boys slept, but what he found instead was Dr. Larch kissing every boy a late good night. Homer imagined then that Dr. Larch had kissed him like that, when he'd been small; Homer could not have imagined how those kisses, even now, were still kisses meant for him. They were kisses seeking Homer Wells. That was the ..
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John Irving |
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881f7e9
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It was Nurse Caroline who introduced Homer to young Dr. Harlow, who was in the throes of growing out his bangs; a cowlick persisted in making his forehead look meager; a floppy shelf of straw-colored hair gave Dr. Harlow's eyes the constant anxiousness of someone peering from under the brim of a hat. 'Oh yes, Wells - our ether expert,' Dr. Harlow said snidely. 'I grew up in an orphanage,' said Homer Wells. 'I did a lot of helping out around..
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John Irving |
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d89c8e0
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She drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch - it was infinitely more beneficial to the soul, and to the intelligence, to read or to listen - and what she imagined there was on TV appalled her.
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John Irving |
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1ae53ad
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It is simply amazing, at that age, when you're thirteen or fourteen, how you can take being loved for granted, how (even when you are wanted) you can feel utterly alone.
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John Irving |
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4700b4a
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Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer --not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every artist should know: as Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.' Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions. Garp did not write faster than anyone else, or more; he simply always worked with the idea of completion in mind.
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John Irving |
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9121259
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This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people--because, surely, Wally was nice--would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer--and harder, if not impossible, to conceal.
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society
gossip
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John Irving |
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671c480
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The Winkles appeared to greet the morning vigorously. Although Homer had never heard human beings make love, or moose mate, he knew perfectly well that the Winkles were mating. If Dr. Larch had been present, he might have drawn new conclusions concerning the Winkles' inability to produce offspring. He would have concluded that the violent athleticism of their coupling simply destroyed, or scared to death, every available egg and sperm.
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John Irving |
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3508907
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Someone who hasn't read a novel doesn't really know what it's about, William.
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John Irving |
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30c4b3a
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Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually; and almost everyone needs to.
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John Irving |
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fc08638
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In every life," Dolores had said, "I think there's always a moment when you must decide where you belong."
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John Irving |
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343fca3
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I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.
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John Irving |
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24c2908
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Casey recalled how Gail defended herself in the parking lot of the English & Philosophy Building from the unwanted attentions of a lecherous fellow student, who shall remain nameless. 'Please leave me alone,' Ms Godwin warned the offending student, 'or I shall be forced to wound you with a weapon you can ill afford to be wounded by in a town this small.' The threat was most mysterious, not to mention writerly, but the oafish lecher was not ..
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John Irving |
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55d6936
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I met him in the language lab. In a lull between lab sections, I was editing tapes for freshman German when this shuffling man of hair came in. Possibly twenty, or forty; possibly student, or faculty, Trotskyite or Amish farmer, human or animal; a theif lumbering out of a camera shop, laden with lenses and light meters; a bear who after a terrible and violent struggle ate a photographer. This beast approached me.
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John Irving |
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fb5abfc
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the demands of writing and of real life are not always similar.
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John Irving |
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8b0c19c
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Reagan Declares Firmness on Gulf; Plans are Unclear Isn't that classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm!
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John Irving |
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5fd0c52
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Your friend is most original,' Dan Needham said, with the greatest respect. 'Don't you see, Johnny? If he could, he would cut off his hands for you - that's how it makes him feel, to have touched that baseball bat, to have swung that bat with those results. It's how we all feel - you and me and Owen. We've lost a part of ourselves.' And Dan picked up the wrecked armadillo and began to experiment with it on my night table, trying - as I had ..
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John Irving |