"You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one."

Enemy, Enemies, Reason, Want

19

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"You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one."

Exlpore more Enemy quotes

"It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind."

Voltaire, French Writer

Enemy, Mankind, Rest

"I don't believe man is a woman's natural enemy. Perhaps his lawyer is."

Shana Alexander, American Journalist

Enemy, Man, Woman

"Yes, I now that you feel you are not strong enough. That's what the enemy thinks too. But we're gonna fool them."

Knute Rockne, American Coach

Enemy, Fool, Now

"Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes."

Oliver Goldsmith, Irish Poet

Enemy,

"Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race."

Henry Miller, American Author

Enemy, Man, Race

"The left-wing, which consists of armoured and motorized forces and has no enemy in front of it, will be stopped dead in its tracks upon direct order from the Fuhrer."

Franz Halder, German Soldier

Enemy, Order, Will

"What did our nation ever do to provoke these madly vicious enemies? What is seen as injustice in one place is seen as just requital in the other."

Mary Douglas, British Scientist

Enemy, Enemies, Injustice, Nation

"Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice."

Jose Marti, Cuban Activist

Enemy, Enemies, Liberty, Voice

"I honored the fallen enemy by placing a stone on his beautiful grave."

Manfred von Richthofen, German Aviator

Enemy, Grave

"The Giants were a good team, but our biggest enemy was said to be Candlestick Park."

Willie Stargell, American Athlete

Enemy, Giants

Explore more quotes by John Irving

"I'll bet every fucking one of your angels is going to be terrifying!"

Imagination

"As for Jenny, she felt only that women - just like men - should at least be able to make conscious decisions about the course of their lives; if that made her a feminist, she said, then she guessed she was one."

Feminism

"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."

Fate

"I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again, forever."

Art

"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."

Morality

"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."

Corruption

"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."

Time

"Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn't much of a theory, but it was all Ruth could truly commit herself to at the moment. It was time to retire that old lecture, and her penance was to endure the compliments of her former credo."

Literature

"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."

Rights

"When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things."

Life