John Irving Quotes

It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.

Writers do not write what they know. They write what they can imagine.

That's what it feels like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it in order to write it down, I change it, and I can't ever get it back.

There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.

I play music, I paint - these things come from your depths.

I loved the world of imagination.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

I have a very vivid imagination.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

I'm very conscious that people dear to me are alive in my imagination - poets in particular.

I swim in a sea of words. They flow around me and through me and, by a process that is not fully clear to me, some delicate hidden membrane draws forth the stuff that is the necessary condition of my life.

I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.

My greatest joy comes from creativity: from feeling that I have been able to identify a certain aspect of human nature and crystallise a phenomenon in words.

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold, and anything else is just a waste of time.

I think people who create and write, it actually does flow-just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It's simple.

I feel like I have so many stories basting in my mind, and they come busting out when they're ready.

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It's like my friend, almost.

It's important to have an imagination.

In terms of the symbolism, I think that if you do it right, writing is a bit like dreaming.

As authors, we know that it is very difficult to unleash one's creativity.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.