A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
John IrvingRead
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding and accepting human behavior with compassion and humor.
John Irving's quote reflects a profound empathy towards the complexities of human nature. He suggests that by taking people seriously, we come to understand their behaviors, shortcomings, and struggles. This understanding breeds sympathy rather than judgment, allowing one to approach the follies of humanity with laughter and compassion rather than disdain.
Themes
EmpathyUnderstandingHumorSympathyPeople
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social issues, one might say, 'I take people very seriously, and we must remember to approach their struggles with both sympathy and laughter.'
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.
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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 – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.
John IrvingRead
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