John Irving Life Quotations

If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

I grew up without a father, who was kept a mystery to me. There was a sense of uprootedness, things being one day here and the next day not; a sense anything could happen. Then, all of a sudden, my mother met my stepfather, and her life became happier, and my life changed, my name changed.

Of all the things you choose in life, you don't get to choose what your nightmares are. You don't pick them; they pick you.

I don't think I've had a very interesting life, and I feel that is a great liberation. That gives me great freedom as a fiction writer. Nothing that happened holds any special tyranny over me.

Half my life is an act of revision.

My life is a reading list.

Life is serious but art is fun!

A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

Life is an X-rated soap opera.

You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.