John Irving Quotes & Sayings

As a self-described Guadalupe girl, Lupe was sensitive to Guadalupe being overshadowed by the "Mary Monster." Lupe not only meant that Mary was the most dominant of the Catholic Church's "stable" of virgins; Lupe believed that the Virgin Mary was also "a domineering virgin. — John Irving

If you're God's instrument, Owen," I said, "how come you need my help to stuff a basketball? — John Irving

THERE'S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE,' said Owen Meany. — John Irving

That was when I first began to think about certain events or specific things being "important" and having "special purpose." Until then, the notion that anything had a designated, much less a special purpose would have been cuckoo to me. I was not what was commonly called a believer then, and I am a believer now; I believe in God, and I believe in the "special purpose" of certain events or specific things. — John Irving

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

The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable - some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control. — John Irving

The day women stop reading - that's the day the novel dies! — John Irving

Wilbur Larch knew that freedom was an orphan's most dangerous illusion, and when he finally heard from Homer, he scanned the oddly formal letter, which was disappointing in its lack of detail. Regarding illusions, and all the rest, there was simply no evidence.
'I am learning to swim,' wrote Homer Wells. (I know! I know! Tell me about it! Thought Wilbur Larch.) 'I do better at driving,' Homer added. — John Irving

In this world," Franny once observed, "just as you're trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you. — John Irving

Dan would entertain Owen and me by describing Mr. Tubulari's pentathlon, his "winterthon." "The first event," Dan Needham said, "is something wholesome, like splitting a cord of wood - points off, if you break your ax. Then you have to run ten miles in deep snow, or snowshoe for thirty. Then you chop a hole in the ice, and - carrying your ax - swim a mile under a frozen lake, chopping your way out at the opposite shore. Then you build an igloo - to get warm. Then comes the dogsledding. You have to mush a team of dogs - from Anchorage to Chicago. Then you build another igloo - to rest." "THAT'S SIX EVENTS," Owen said. "A PENTATHLON IS ONLY FIVE." "So forget the second igloo," Dan Needham said. "I WONDER WHAT MISTER TUBULARI DOES FOR NEW YEAR'S EVE," Owen said. "Carrot juice," Dan said, fixing himself another whiskey. "Mister Tubulari makes his own carrot juice. — John Irving

Well, that boy's voice," my grandmother told me, "that boy's voice could bring those mice back to life!" And it occurs to me now that Owen's voice was the voice of all those murdered mice, coming back to life - with a vengeance. — John Irving

No es buen momento para un terremoto," Lupe used to say. "It's not a good moment for an earthquake. — John Irving

Here come the characters who comprise the movie vermin, the Hollywood scum, the film slime - the aforementioned "unscrupulous cowards of mediocrity." Fortunately, they are minor characters, yet so distasteful that their introduction has been delayed as long as possible. — John Irving

Everybody dies ... The thing is, to have a life before we die. — John Irving

It's magical thinking to imagine that the reason unspeakable things are being perpetrated by younger and younger people is that they've fallen under the influence of seductive, lascivious, prurient, and violent material in books, films, television. A great deal of this type of censorship has to do with absolving parents of responsibility - parents who just plop their kids in front of the television and leave them there hour upon hour. — John Irving

Canon Campbell told me that most smart-ass Canadians tend to move to the United States. I — John Irving

Ad majorem Dei gloriam - to the greater glory of God. — John Irving

Oh FUCK the longings and agonies of youth. — John Irving

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything. — John Irving

(As a novelist, he was always looking ahead, too.) — John Irving

But she drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch - it was infinitely more beneficial to the soul, and to the intelligence, to read or to listen - and what she imagined there was to watch on TV appalled her; she had, of course, only read about it. — John Irving

'Great Expectations' was an important novel in my adolescence. It was very much one of those emblematic novels that made me wish I could write like that. It helped that my models as a writer were dead over a hundred years before I began to write. — John Irving

It seems to me that people who don't learn as easily as others suffer from a kind of learning disability - there is something different about the way they comprehend unfamiliar material - but I fail to see how this disability is improved by psychiatric consultation. What seems to be lacking is a technical ability that those of us called 'good students' are born with. Someone should concretely study these skills and teach them. What does a shrink have to do with the process? — John Irving

Because I was a Wheelwright-and, therefore, a New England snob-I'd assumed that Phoenix was largely composed of Mormons and Baptists and Republicans; — John Irving

There were some very good books in the backseat of the little Volkswagen; good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands - you could not hold faith in Jesus in your hands, not in quite the same way you could hold good books. — John Irving

These same people who tell us we must defend the lives of the unborn-they are the same people who seem not so interested in defending anyone but themselves after the accident of birth is complete! These same people who profess their love of the unborn's soul-they don't care to make much of a contribution to the poor, they don't care to offer much assistance to the unwanted or the oppressed! How do they justify such a concern for the fetus and such a lack of concern for unwanted and abused children? They condemn others for the accident of conception; they condemn the poor-as if the poor can help being poor. One way the poor could help themselves would be to be in control of the size of their families. I thought that freedom of choice was obviously democratic-was obviously American! — John Irving

Juan Diego lived there, in the past - reliving, in his imagination, the losses that had marked him. — John Irving

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

And never forget, there is memory. — John Irving

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy — John Irving

If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin. — John Irving

He felt fortunate to be with Helen; she had her own ambitions and he could not manipulate here. — John Irving

MADE FOR TELEVISION. — John Irving

I later found a bookstore on the Calle de Gravina - Libros, I believe it was called. (I'm not kidding, a bookstore called "Books.") — John Irving

Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel. — John Irving

Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda - and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American. — John Irving

Foreshadowing is the storytelling companion of fate. — John Irving

May God watch over your soul, which no man may abuse. — John Irving

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels. — John Irving

The one critisism the author of Slaugherhouse-Five would make of the young writer was what he called a punctuation problem. Mr. Vonnegut didn't like all the semicolons. 'People will probably figure out that you went to college
you don't have to try to prove it to them,' he told Danny. — John Irving

I suppose I try to look for those things where the world turns on you. It's every automobile accident, every accident at a party, you're having a good time until suddenly you're not. — John Irving

God, I think I just hit a high E-flat - and I really held it! Esmeralda said, after one of her more prolonged orgasms, but my ears were warm and sweaty, and my head had been held so tightly between her thighs that I hadn't heard anything. — John Irving

And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears. — John Irving

I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever. — John Irving

Candy took the bathing suit from her and used the suit to wipe the tears from Rose Rose's face.
"You're fine, you're just fine," Candy said to the girl. "And you're going to feel better. No one's going to hurt you. — John Irving

I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed. — John Irving

People are like that ... They need to make their own worst experiences universal. It gives them a kind of support.' And who can blame them? It is just infuriating to argue with someone like that; because of an experience that has denied them their humanity, they go around denying another kind of humanity in others, which is the truth of human variety
it stands alongside our sameness. — John Irving

A novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more complicated than it seems at the beginning. — John Irving

For seven of the eight years he was president, Reagan would not say the AIDS word. — John Irving

I shared my grandmother's distaste for the word rector - it sounded too much like rectum to be taken seriously. — John Irving

Once again, Jack reached for her hand. It was the only thing he knew how to do. As it would turn out, it was about the only thing he reall knew. — John Irving

It is an important distinction to note that she looked not only as if she had taken good care of herself, but that she had good reason to have done so. ( ... ) She looked to be in such total possession of her life that only the most confident men could continue to look at her if she looked back at them. Even in bus stations, she was a woman who was stared at only until she looked back. — John Irving

You think you have a memory; but it has you! Later, — 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 (The World According To) Garp was published, people who'd lost children wrote to me. 'I lost one, too,' they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn't lost any children. I'm just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword) — 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

Half my life is an act of revision; more than half the act is performed with small changes. — John Irving

It surprised him that she was the one who looked stricken with fear, as if she were a prisoner in the passenger seat and saw the fast-approaching collision seconds before the drive could react to it. Bonnie pinched her lower lip with her teeth and stared at Jack as if she were transfixed
as if he were the upcoming accident, and, even though she saw him coming, she couldn't turn away. — John Irving

Here is the trap you are in ... And it's not my trap - I haven't trapped you. 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. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice - and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you. — John Irving

Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose. — John Irving

THE BRITISH NEVER WATCH BASEBALL! — John Irving

Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something. — John Irving

Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors. — John Irving

A part of adolescence is feeling that there's no one else around who's enough like yourself to understand you. — John Irving

If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind? — John Irving

It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly. — John Irving

What woman wants to hear someone say what her husband is thinking? What guy is going to be happy hearing what's on his wife's mind? — John Irving

It's Shakespearean, Bill; lots of the important stuff in Shakespeare happens offstage - you just hear about it. — John Irving

THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL ... THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOUR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US. — John Irving

Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite way to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination. Her — John Irving

You have taught yourself to read English, too," Pepe said slowly to the boy; the girl suddenly gave him the shivers, for no known reason. "English is just a little different - I can understand it," the boy told him, — John Irving

What we witnessed with the death of Kennedy was the triumph of television; what we saw with his assassination, and with his funeral, was the beginning of television's dominance of our culture
for television is at its most solemnly self-serving and at its mesmerizing best when it is depicting the untimely deaths of the chosen and the golden. It is as witness to the butchery of heroes in their prime
and of all holy-seeming innocents
that televisions achieves its deplorable greatness. — John Irving

Even Clark French's novels exerted a tenacious and combative goodwill: his main characters, lost souls and serial sinners, always found redemption; the act of redeeming usually followed a moral low point; the novels predictably ended in a crescendo of benevolence. — John Irving

Never spoke of it. He took the miracle to his grave. All Andrew ever said about the voyage was that a nun had taught him how to play mah-jongg. Something must have happened during one of their games. — John Irving

Because who can describe the look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death? — John Irving

Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory. — John Irving

I actually remember my grandfather better as a woman than as a man. — John Irving

Jenny Fields discovered that you got more respect from shocking other people than you got from trying to live your own life with a little privacy. — John Irving

Some producer actually told Franny that profanity revealed a poor vocabulary and a lack of imagination. And Frank and Lilly and Father and I all loved to shout at Franny, then, and ask her what she had said to that. 'What an anal crock of shit, you dumb asshole!' she'd told the producer. 'Up yours - and in your ear, too! — John Irving

I believe that, in any novel of mine, the principal objective is the construction of the whole. — John Irving

Well, you finally got me, Helen had whispered to him, tearfully, but Garp had sprawled there, on his back on the wrestling mat, wondering who had gotten whom. — John Irving

There are always suicides," Garp wrote, "among people who are unable to say what they mean". — John Irving

I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. — John Irving

Women know when men don't desire them: ghosts and witches, deities and demons, angels of death - even virgins, even ordinary women. They always know; women can tell when you have stopped desiring them. — John Irving

Safer than we are." I told Franny. "Safer than love." "let me tell ya kid," Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. "Everything's safer than love. — John Irving

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind. — John Irving

You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who's leaping up and down on a bed. — John Irving

I didn't try to say the penis word for Elaine. "Cock," I said to her. — John Irving

Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness. — John Irving

Bonkie bit Garp!"
Garp bit Bonkie — John Irving

I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you. — John Irving

You know, it's not only writers who have this problem, but writers really, really have this problem; for us, a so-called train of thought, though unspoken, is unstoppable. — John Irving

It's rare when there's something we can do for ourselves which also pleases someone else. — John Irving

That's actually happened?' Ruth asked.
'Everything's happened,' the prostitute said. — John Irving

As a fourteen-year-old, he'd not been old enough to have sympathy for her - for either the child or the adult that she was. — John Irving

INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,'" he'd said over my mother's grave; and so I say that one for him - I know it was one of his favorites. I am always saying prayers for Owen Meany. And — John Irving

One of the humbling things about having written more than one novel is the sense that every time you begin, that new empty page does not know who you are. — John Irving

The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life led by human beings; the second was that human beings could survive a life in hotels. — John Irving

DON'T GIVE ME THE SHIVERS,' Owen said. — John Irving

This is a writer's lesson:
To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all. — John Irving