John Irving Quotes

108 Sourced Quotes

Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.

John Irving
Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!

John Irving
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.

John Irving
But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.

John Irving
YOU LET ME DROWN! Owen said. YOU DIDN'T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I'M ALREADY DEAD! he told us. REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.

John Irving
All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.

John Irving
He wrote Helen that "a part of adolescence is feeling that there's no one else around you who's enough like yourself to understand you."

John Irving
She felt detached from her family, and thought it strange how they had lavished so much attention on her, as a child, and then at some appointed, prearranged time they seemed to stop the flow of affection and being the expectations - as if, for a brief phrase, you were expected to absorb love (and get enough), and then, for a much longer and more serious phase, you were expected to fulfill certain obligations.

John Irving
Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.

John Irving
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean—make sure they know what they mean!

John Irving
The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.

John Irving
Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.

John Irving
The gardener had a dread of small women; he'd always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.

John Irving
The consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.

John Irving
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.

John Irving
In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.

John Irving
Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.

John Irving
They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.

John Irving
How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.

John Irving
My dear boy, please don't put a label on me—don't make me a category before you get to know me!

John Irving
All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down.

John Irving
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson

John Irving
A writer is a vehicle. I feel the story I am writing existed before I existed; I'm just the slob who finds it, and rather clumsily tries to do it, and the characters, justice.

John Irving
You live your life at the time you live it — you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.

John Irving
People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.

John Irving
When however small a measure of jealousy is mixed with misunderstanding, there is going to be trouble.

John Irving
So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone's older brother and someone's older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them.

John Irving
Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela's empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch's reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer was inclined to hurry - in order not to miss the bedtime story.

John Irving
Every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent.

John Irving
It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.

John Irving