#l

You know, people think you have to be dumb to skip rope for 45 minutes. No, you have to be able to imagine something else. While you're skipping rope, you have to be able to see something else. ↗

— John Irving

#dumb #else #imagine #know #minutes

I have a tremendous desire to learn, and to grow, and to develop whatever I have that will make for any kind of improvement in me. ↗

— Lawrence Welk

#desire #develop #grow #i #improvement

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense. ↗

— John Irving

#each #even #family #just #make

And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you. ↗

— John Irving

#begin #connections #first #i #important

Good habits are worth being fanatical about. ↗

— John Irving

#being #fanatical #good #good habits #habits

I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey. ↗

— John Irving

#atmosphere #begin #convey #ending #happens

I had been a student in Vienna, and one of the neat little things I had found out was about that zoo. It was a good debut novel for me to have published. I was 26 or 27 when it was published. I already had a kid and would soon have a second. ↗

— John Irving

#already #been #debut #found #good

I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography. ↗

— John Irving

#i #i think #imagination #imagined #interesting

More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina. ↗

— John Irving

#i #kind #life #maybe #me

My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons. ↗

— John Irving

#match #old #reasons #say #trophies