John Irving In One Person Quotes & Sayings

A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to pray. Just when I start to hear the prayer, everyone pops up to sing. And what does the stupid sermon have to do with God? Who knows what God thinks of current events? Who cares? — John Irving

The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference. — John Irving

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. — John Irving

Jenny Fields felt undone, the way only a person who has been careful can feel when confronted by a mistake. — John Irving

There is often a defining experience that marks any significant change in the course of a person's life. — John Irving

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. — John Irving

If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane. — John Irving

I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen. — John Irving

Bill is a fiction writer, but he writes in the first-person voice in a style that is tell-all confessional; in fact, his fiction sounds as much like a memoir as he can make it sound. — John Irving

(You shouldn't guess about someone's past; if you don't see any evidence of it, a person's past remains unknown to you.) — John Irving