John Irving Quotes

My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

A first novel should be brash and ambitious, and announce the arrival of a new talent.

Big Stephen King fan. I think he's dismissed often as a hack probably because of his prolific body of work, but he's anything but. I think he's a terrific writer. And not just a genre writer; he really approaches a number of complexities in everything he writes. So I'm a huge fan.

You can't take a story and just stretch it out - that does not a novel make.

If you're going to clutter up the world with more novels, you should do a little more than entertain people.

Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.

Literature is a house with many mansions.

What I like about writing novels is that I'm in my own world for nine months.

You know that thing people say, 'poetry is the hardest, stories are the second hardest, novels are the easiest?' I'm here to tell you that novels are the hardest. Writing a novel is unbelievably difficult. It's nightmarish.

Of course I knew that writing was terrifically hard work and that there was no secret code, as in a video game, that would unlock Tolstoy-mode, enabling me to crank out canon-worthy novellas before lunch.

I see myself maybe being, like, a movie producer or screenwriter or a novelist or a scientist or mathematician.

I love great writing.

Even the best novelists are rarely congratulated on the quality of their observations about contemporary life.

I thought that if one wanted to be a writer, one had to write novels because I didn't know that one could be a poet.

It's not easy to craft a novel that gradually erodes the reader's comprehension of the world, of reality and identity and the passage of time.

Novels are almost like music or poetry - they just come to me in simple sentences, whereas I think my pieces get more and more complex ever since I've started using a computer.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.

As a novelist, your impulse is toward multiplicity: multiple voices, multiple perceptions, multiple nuances, the ambiguity in human communication. Fiction really is the ultimate home for that sense of ambiguity.

I feel the responsibility of the novelist is to create a very complex world populated by very complex individuals and to deepen that as much as possible. I don't think the responsibility of the reporter or journalist is fundamentally different.

Things are always more complicated than most people believe.

I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft.

Personally, I do not believe that it is the duty of any man or woman to write a novel. In nine cases out of ten, there would be greater merit in leaving it unwritten.

The novel is the highest example of subtle interrelatedness that man has discovered.

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.