34+ John McGahern Quotes On Education, Lake And Introspective

John McGahern was an Irish novelist, short story writer, and playwright. He was born in Dublin in 1934 and is best known for his novel The Barracks and his collection of short stories, The Pornographer. He was a major figure in the Irish literary world and was awarded the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. Following is our collection on famous quotes by John McGahern on leadership, education, love.

Top 10 John McGahern Quotes

1. My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So Far, so good.'
2. When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody.
3. We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places.
4. I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.
5. The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.
6. When you're in danger of losing a thing it becomes precious and when it's around us, it's in tedious abundance and we take it for granted as if we're going to live forever, which we're not.
7. I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.
8. The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.
9. Yes, though I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing in the church.
10. Yes, but also one of the problems for a novelist in Ireland is the fact that there are no formal manners. I mean some people have beautiful manners but there's no kind of agreed form of manners.

John McGahern Short Quotes

• I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.
• The imagination demands that life be told slant because of its need of distance.
• I think my mother was very spiritual.
• My father was very outwardly religious.
• Nothing ever holds together unless it is mixed with some of one's own blood
• I'd much prefer to write more quickly.

John McGahern Quotes About Book

The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book. — John McGahern

…only then did I wake out of the book. — John McGahern

I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story. — John McGahern

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy. — John McGahern

I used to take five or six books away and bring five or six books back. Nobody gave me direction or advice and I read much in the way that a boy might watch television. — John McGahern

John McGahern Famous Quotes And Sayings

Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century. — John McGahern

I think technique can be taught but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, and I see writing and reading as completely related. One almost couldn't exist without the other. — John McGahern

Among its many other obligations, fiction always has to be believable. Life does not have to suffer such constraint, and much of what takes place is believable only because it happens. — John McGahern

As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write. It's a process of discovery. — John McGahern

When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist. — John McGahern

Anything that is given can be at once taken away. We have to learn never to expect anything, and when it comes it's no more than a gift on loan. — John McGahern

I feel I grew up in a different century than I live in. I think most of them are changes for the good. — John McGahern

I suppose . . . in writing you can't have regrets. I mean, you just get it down the way it was . . . it's only wishful thinking that things could be other than they were. — John McGahern

I think that each of us inhabits a private world that others cannot see. The only difference between the writer and the reader is that the writer is able to dramatise that private world. — John McGahern

Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially subversive) alone with a book the whole razzmatazz of prizes, banquets, television spectaculars, bestseller lists, even literature courses, editors and authors, are all worthless. Unless a book finds lovers among those solitary readers, it will not live . . . or live for long. — John McGahern

I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church. — John McGahern

...with a rush of feeling he felt that this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him, he fought it back, blaming the whiskey. The very idea was as dangerous as presumptive speech: happiness could not be sought or worried into being, or even fully grasped; it should be allowed its own slow pace so that it passes unnoticed, if it ever comes at all. — John McGahern

I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts. — John McGahern

Life Lessons by John McGahern

1. John McGahern's work emphasizes the importance of relationships, particularly between family members, and how they can shape our lives.
2. He also explores themes of identity, and how our past experiences can affect our present and future.
3. McGahern's writing also highlights the power of nature, and how it can be a source of solace and comfort in times of difficulty.