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John Irving Quotes
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Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
John Irving
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All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man.
John Irving
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If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something — just by staying alive.
John Irving
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You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
John Irving
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We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.
John Irving
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Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!
John Irving
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean—make sure they know what they mean!
John Irving
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The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
John Irving
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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
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The gardener had a dread of small women; he'd always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.
John Irving
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The consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.
John Irving
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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
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In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
John Irving
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Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.
John Irving
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They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
John Irving
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How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
John Irving
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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
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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
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Quote of the day
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
Georges Bataille
John Irving
Creative Commons
Born:
March 2, 1942
(age 82)
Bio:
John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
Known for:
Avenue of Mysteries (2015)
The World According to Garp (1978)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
The Cider House Rules (1985)
In One Person (2012)
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