If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.
WISDOM · VERIFIED · EN
John Irving Quote
“Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.”
0
Source: Quotables — alvations/Quotables (CC0 1.0 dataset)
Attribution status: verified · Publication status: cleared
Explore more quotes attributed to John Irving or browse wisdom quotes.
If you believe this quote is incorrectly attributed or should be removed, see Copyright and quote corrections.
Related verified quotes
Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!
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 write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.
If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.
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.