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Was he nice? He didn't know. He hoped he was, but how many of us truly know?
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John Irving |
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63104df
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bees are a model society, a lesson in teamwork!
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John Irving |
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0c04e6e
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But miracles don't c-c-c-cause belief--real miracles don't m-m-m-make faith out of thin air; you have to already have faith in order to believe in real miracles.
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John Irving |
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01d0f67
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every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance toward the innocent
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religion
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John Irving |
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The Reagan administration is full of such "careless people"; their kind of carelessness is immoral. And President Reagan calls himself a Christian! How does he dare? The kind of people claiming to be in communication with God today ... they are enough to drive a real Christian crazy! And how about these evangelical types, performing miracles for money? Oh, there's big bucks in interpreting the gospel for idiots--or in having idiots interpre..
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John Irving |
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b3a28c8
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DON'T GIVE ME THE SHIVERS,' Owen said.
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John Irving |
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03c73d6
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It was Wilbur Larch who was the first man in Maine to call a television what it was: "an idiot box."
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John Irving |
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2cfa408
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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"
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John Irving |
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c7d4678
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You shouldn't guess about someone's past; if you don't see any evidence of it, a person's past remains unknown to you.)
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John Irving |
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1d23dd1
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THE BRITISH NEVER WATCH BASEBALL!
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John Irving |
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3cbabab
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So that's what it means to be a "nonpracticing homosexual," I thought: it means I don't know what I am!"
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John Irving |
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proposed--in
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John Irving |
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AND LOOK AT WHAT WE CALL 'RELIGION': TURN ON ANY TELEVISION ON ANY SUNDAY MORNING! SEE THE CHOIRS OF THE POOR AND UNEDUCATED--AND THESE TERRIBLE PREACHERS, SELLING OLD JESUS-STORIES LIKE JUNK FOOD. SOON THERE'LL BE AN EVANGELIST IN THE WHITE HOUSE; SOON THERE'LL BE A CARDINAL ON THE SUPREME COURT. ONE DAY THERE WILL COME AN EPIDEMIC--I'LL BET ON SOME HUMDINGER OF A SEXUAL DISEASE. AND WHAT WILL OUR PEERLESS LEADERS, OUR HEADS OF CHURCH AND ..
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John Irving |
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REMEMBER WATAHANTOWET?" he asked me. "I remember," I said. Then he smiled at the "penguin" who was trying to make him comfortable in her lap; her wimple was covered with his blood, and she had wrapped as much of her habit around him as she could manage--because he was shivering. "'... WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE,'" Owen said to her. The nun nodded in agreement; she made the sign of the cross over him. Then Owen smil..
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John Irving |
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SMALLER, BUT I CAN STILL SEE YOU!" said Owen Meany. Then he left us; he was gone. I could tell by his almost cheerful expression that he was at least as high as the palm trees. Major Rawls saw to it that Owen Meany got a medal. I was asked to make an eyewitness report, but Major Rawls was instrumental in pushing the proper paperwork through the military chain of command. Owen Meany was awarded the so-called Soldier's Medal: "For heroism tha..
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John Irving |
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he had seen his share of heroes, too. Major Rawls never knew everything that Owen had known; the major knew only that Owen had been a hero--he didn't know that Owen Meany had been a miracle, too. There's a prayer I say most often for Owen. It's one of the little prayers he said for my mother, the night Hester and I found him in the cemetery--where he'd brought the flashlight, because he knew how my mother had hated the darkness. "'INTO PARA..
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John Irving |
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His exposure to storytelling, through Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte, had ill prepared him for characters who came from and traveled nowhere -- or for stories that made no sense.
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John Irving |
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Choc juz tyle razy przezylem meke i smierc Chrystusa, nieodmiennie niepokoje sie o Jego zmartwychwstanie - jestem przerazony, ze w tym roku sie to nie uda.
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wielkanoc
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John Irving |
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71c8683
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That image of how the children can lift Owen over their heads in Sunday school--how he is light enough so they can easily pass him back and forth when the teacher is out of the room--is not only as near to the beginning of the novel as I could find a place for it; that image is echoed at the end of the novel, where Owen's seeming weightlessness is interpreted to mean that he was always in God's hands. But the penultimate paragraph of the
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John Irving |
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But the penultimate paragraph of the novel is naturally the passage I wrote first. "When we held Owen Meany above our heads, when we passed him back and forth--so effortlessly--we believed that Owen weighed nothing at all. We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen's weightlessness; they were the forces we didn't have the faith to feel, they were the fo..
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John Irving |
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At Owen Meany's burial, one of Owen's Sunday school classmates remembers how easy he was to lift up. "He was so light--he weighed nothing at all! How could he have been so light?" Because God already had His hands on him--that's how."
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John Irving |
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2215043
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Okay," I said. I still have that photograph, though I don't like remembering any part of the day Carlton Delacorte died."
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John Irving |
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I later found a bookstore on the Calle de Gravina--Libros, I believe it was called. (I'm not kidding, a bookstore called "Books.")"
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John Irving |
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aa14992
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The good gringo asked Lupe if she forgave him for sleeping with her mother. "Yes," Lupe said, "but we can't ever get married."
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John Irving |
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The thing about sin, Jack, is that some people think it's very important and other people don't even believe it exists.
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John Irving |
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Because of A Prayer for Owen Meany, many of my readers assume I am "religious." I go to church only occasionally--like a lot of people, I believe in God in times of crisis. But I have had no religious "experience"; I've never been a witness to a miracle. The reason A Prayer for Owen Meany has a first-person narrator is that you can't have a religious experience or witness a miracle except through the eyes of a believer. And the believer I c..
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John Irving |
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who are always right, and are given to reminding us of it, are irritating; prophets are irritating, and Owen Meany is decidedly a prophet. Because I don't start a novel until I know the ending, every novel of mine is predestined. In A Prayer for Owen Meany, it was not that much of a stretch to make the main character aware (to some degree) of his own predestination. After all, I am always aware of the predestination of my characters. In Owe..
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John Irving |
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WHAT'S WRONG WITH BOTH OF THEM IS THAT THEY'RE SO SURE THEY'RE RIGHT! THAT'S PRETTY SCARY--THE
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John Irving |
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It was in looking at sea gulls that it first occurred to Homer Wells that he was free.
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John Irving |
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But you of all people!" I said to him. "Look at me--I never was a believer, not until this happened. If I can believe it, why can't you?" I asked Mr. Merrill. He began to stutter. "It's easier for you to j-j-j-just accept it. Belief is not something you have felt, and then not felt; you haven't l-l-l-lived with belief, and with unbelief. It's easier f-f-f-for you," the Rev. Mr. Merrill repeated. "You haven't ever been f-f-f-full of faith, a..
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John Irving |
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Of course I knew then where Hester had hidden Owen Meany; he'd been under the couch cushions--and under her!--all the while we were searching. That explained why his appearance had been so rumpled, why his hair had looked slept on. The Hank Bauer card must have fallen out of his pocket. Discoveries like this--not to mention, Owen's voice "speaking" to me in the secret passageway, and his hand (or something like a hand) seeming to take hold ..
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John Irving |
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INTO PARADISE MAY THE ANGELS LEAD YOU,
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John Irving |
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Owen Meany had believed that his death was necessary if others were to be saved from a stupidity and hatred that was destroying him. In that belief, surely he was not so unfamiliar a hero.
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John Irving |
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What do they expect of a one-eyed, one-armed artist-- and the son of Garp? No flaws?
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John Irving |
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IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT--IT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT--IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT." "What" --
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John Irving |
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Richard Abbott, who I thought knew everything, answered: "I don't know, exactly."
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John Irving |
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Don't forget: Miss Frost was an older woman, and that goes a long way with boys--even if the older woman has a penis!
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John Irving |
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cf4e04e
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Don't worry, Bill," Borkman told me. "I have Muriel and Richard in my pocket-back!" "In your back pocket--yes," I said to the crafty deerstalker on skis."
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John Irving |
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Good evening, knocked-up faculty daughter. How are you managing now, you smelly little slut?
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John Irving |
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In addition to suffering her husband's scathing portrayal of a shrewish wife and mother, Nana Victoria had to sit not more than two seats away from the transsexual wrestler!)
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John Irving |
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He wrote Helen that a young writer needs desperately to live with someone and he had decided that he wanted to live with her; even marry her, he offered, because sex was simply necessary but it took too much of one's time if one had to be constantly planning how one was going to get it. Therefore, Garp reasoned, it is better to live with it! Helen revised several letters before she finally sent him one that said he could, so to speak, go st..
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John Irving |
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I saw an oxygen tank in the cluttered room--what had been Atkins's "study," as his son had explained, now converted for a deathwatch."
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John Irving |
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This prevented Elaine from making up any stories about whomever I was seeing at the time, man or woman. Therefore, no one was falsely accused of shitting in the bed.
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John Irving |
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Wizened and white, with brown blotched on her face the size and complexity of unshelled peanuts, Midge had a jitter in her head that made her pew like a chicken trying to make up its mind what to peck.
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humor
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John Irving |