Time & Perspective Quote by John Irving

"I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story"

John Irving, Novelist

About this Quote

Irving is tipping his hand about craft, but he’s also making a quiet argument about what a novel is for. The love letter here isn’t to “the past” so much as to a particular engine of narrative: plot that actually moves, characters who change because events press on them, and time treated not as background but as pressure. Calling the passage of time “a major minor character” is a neat Irving-ism: time doesn’t get a speaking role, yet it drives every scene’s stakes, rearranging loyalties, hardening regrets, and turning youthful choices into adult sentences.

The subtext is a mild rebuke to certain 20th-century and contemporary fashions: the anti-plot novel, the mood piece, the book that prizes surface intelligence over consequential motion. Irving isn’t saying experimentation is bad; he’s insisting that readability and architecture aren’t sins. “Plotted” and “character-driven” are paired like a manifesto because he sees them as inseparable. Plot, for him, is not a contrivance but a moral structure: actions accrue interest over years, and the bill arrives whether you’re ready or not.

Context matters because Irving’s own novels are built like long corridors with doors you remember passing earlier. He’s famous for telegraphing outcomes, then making you watch time do its work anyway. That’s the 19th-century inheritance he’s claiming: suspense isn’t only about what happens, it’s about what it costs over time.

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About the Author

John Irving (born March 2, 1942) is a Novelist from USA.

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