A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
John IrvingRead
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers are keen observers of human behavior and can replicate it through their work.
In this quote, John Irving suggests that writers possess a unique ability to closely observe and understand human behavior, which allows them to imitate those behaviors in their writing. This observation is not merely a passive act; it requires a level of ruthlessness, as writers must delve into the complexities of human emotion and action to authentically portray their subjects.
Themes
WritersObservationBehaviorImitationHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the craft of writing, one might say, 'As John Irving suggests, writers are not just creators but keen observers of human behavior.'
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
It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author's experience worked out literally.
Gore VidalRead
A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.
Fernando PessoaRead
To the question, ‘Is the cinema an art?’ my answer is, ‘what does it matter?’... You can make films or you can cultivate a garden. Both have as much claim to being called an art as a poem by Verlaine or a painting by Delacroix… Art is ‘making.’ The art of poetry is the art of making poetry. The art of love is the art of making love... My father never talked to me about art. He could not bear the word.
Jean RenoirRead
Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.
Patti SmithRead
In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.
Pearl S. BuckRead
The only music I don't like is bad music.
Quincy JonesRead