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"Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?"
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"This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job."
"A book is as private and consensual as sex."
"For the narrative to exist, so that it could be read and reread even if I was taken away. Stories outlive their writers all the time. We know plenty about Goethe and Charles Dickens from what they chose to tell, even though they have been dead for years."
"I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various."
"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."
"I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing."
"When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time."
"Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible."
"Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions."
Explore more quotes by John Irving
"Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement,'" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives."
"Men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God."
"THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL...THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOUR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US."
"And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone."
"Here is the trap you are in.... And it's not my trap-I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice-and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you."
"I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography."
"It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them."
"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."
"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."
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