A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
John IrvingRead
It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the complexities of nature versus nurture in human development, arguing that reducing it to a simple debate is unproductive.
John Irving suggests that the debate between nature (what we are born with) and nurture (how our environment shapes us) is not only inconclusive but also tedious. He emphasizes that both aspects are deeply intertwined and contribute to the complexities of human existence, and thus oversimplifying this relationship undermines the richness of our understanding of life and personal growth.
Themes
NatureNurtureGrowthComplexityPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote would be great to include in a discussion about child development in psychology class.
More from John Irving
All quotes →No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.
John IrvingRead
It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.
John IrvingRead
It is an important distinction to note that she looked not only as if she had taken good care of herself, but that she had good reason to have done so. (...) She looked to be in such total possession of her life that only the most confident men could continue to look at her if she looked back at them. Even in bus stations, she was a woman who was stared at only until she looked back.
John IrvingRead
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
John IrvingRead
I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.
John IrvingRead
Similar quotes
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'
Lewis CarrollRead
Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen
Suzanne CollinsRead
Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
George OrwellRead
What view is one likely to take of the state of a person's mind when his speech is wild and incoherent and knows no constraint?
Seneca The YoungerRead
It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
Bertrand RussellRead
It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.
John Paul StevensRead