SZ-Magazine: In your latest novel, Adam, a writer and the first-person narrator, is asked whether writers always steal sentences from their acquaintances. are you a thief
John Irving: Of course. Graham Greene expressed it in the way that suits me best when asked where his characters come from: A fictional character is almost never derived from a single real person, but is a mixture of many people – a dialogue of one who Someone else’s way of moving their hands. One person alone would hardly be entertaining enough, you need at least four, five. However, when I look at my characters afterwards, I usually know who I stole or rather borrowed from.
John Irving in an interview about “The Last Chairlift”
