John Irving Quotes

To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

I love being able to create something from the page and bring it to life.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it.

Sometimes I can see the whole painting from the outset in my mind's eye. But more often than not, that idea doesn't last the duration of the painting. Sometimes it comes out easy, just as I had envisaged. But that is reasonably rare.

I love being creative. I love acting, but I also love directing because you get to have a vision for the whole and bring that vision to fruition.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

No one was creating and I always wanted to be created on.

I am like a folk painter. Paint and move ahead.

For me, I get a part of an idea here and a little bit of an idea there, and then finally it accumulates into a movie.

Conception, my boy, fundamental brain work, is what makes all the difference in art.

I love producing! It's so much fun to start with a blank canvas and create the picture you want to create and see it all come together.

Once I'm given an idea for a story I have a million ideas on how it should be illustrated, but I don't have a big shoebox full of unfinished ideas.

To some extent, I draw on what I see around me; in other places, I imagine what I write.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

People have asked me a lot, 'What comes first? The pictures or the story? The story or the picture?' It's hard to describe because often they seem to come at the same time. I'm seeing images while I'm thinking of the story.

I try not to picture a reader when I'm writing. It's like trying to make a great table but not picturing anybody sitting at it.