John Irving - The Cider House Rules (1985)

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… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign; it is at least a form of being human.

John Irving
Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.

John Irving
The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face; he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he'd not yet seen.

John Irving
Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!

John Irving
There was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.

John Irving
He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women- it was just another way of legalizing violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say.

John Irving
When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what's it matter what they did to you?

John Irving
He had in abundance youth's most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.

John Irving
The thing that is most hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most wind up in parentheses.

John Irving
… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal 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
How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.

John Irving
People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.

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
Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either

John Irving
What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.

John Irving