A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
John IrvingRead
But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love often blurs the line between reality and imagination.
John Irving's quote explores the complex nature of love, suggesting that even authentic feelings of love are influenced by our imagination. This highlights how our perceptions and fantasies can shape our emotional experiences, making it difficult to discern genuine love from mere idealization.
Themes
LoveImaginationFeelingsEmotionRelationship
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding toast, one might quote this to highlight the mysterious nature of love.
More from John Irving
All quotes βNo 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.
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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.
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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.
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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 β toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.
John IrvingRead
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