John Winslow Irving (born 2 March 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (for The Cider House Rules, based on his novel of the same name).
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Dr. Jost Hindersmann Krimidoedel (CC BY)
Also Known As
Birth Name:
John Wallace Blunt
Alternative Names:
John Winslow Irving
•
John Wallace Blunt, Jr.
An affection that was calculated was never trustworthy.
Being wrong about important things is exhausting.
A terrorist, I think, is simply another kind of pornographer. The pornographer pretends he is disgusted by his work; the terrorist pretends he is uninterested in the means. The ends, they say, are what they care about. But they are both lying. Ernst loved his pornography; Ernst worshiped the means. It is never the ends that matter — it is only the means that matter. The terrorist and the pornographer are in it for the means. The means is everything to them. The blast of the bomb, the elephant position, the Schlagobers and blood — they love it all. Their intellectual detachment is a fraud; their indifference is feigned. They both tell lies about having ‘higher purposes.’ A terrorist is a pornographer.