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01093bd
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She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
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John Irving |
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2984cf7
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Dan suggested to Owen and me that we were better off to not involve ourselves with Hester. How true! But how we wanted to be involved in the thrilling real-life sleaziness that we suspected Hester was in the thick-of. We were in a phase, through television and the movies, of living only vicariously. Even faintly sordid silliness excited us if it put us in contact with love.
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John Irving |
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59df88c
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What she might have told him was that taxidermy, like sex, is a very personal subject; the manner in which we impose it on others should be discreet.
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John Irving |
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4065aac
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I TRUST THAT GOD WILL HELP ME, BECAUSE WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO LOOKS VERY HARD.
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god
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John Irving |
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f6f0bd0
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The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law-they disgrace democracy by claiming that what they do they do for democracy! They should be in jail. They should be in Hollywood!
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John Irving |
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a1dc8f4
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Love was certainly not safe - not ever.
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John Irving |
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1811c9e
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I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.' (David Copperfield) "But all that night he lay awake because the phantoms of those days were not gone. Like the tiny, terrible holes in the prophylactics, the phantoms of those days were not easy to detect--and their meaning was unknown--but they were there."
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John Irving |
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31de552
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Buster was queer as a cat fart.
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John Irving |
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1cb3510
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The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.
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John Irving |
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ff1ab57
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Did the rhythm of the train on the tracks somehow unravel her and make her behave out of character? Was she altered in transit, when her feet were not upon the ground?
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John Irving |
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84b5a1d
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Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues that generate the headlines, are pure fat.
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John Irving |
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2c26ca1
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It was not the cold that made you want to rush out as soon as you'd jumped in; it was the unmeasured depth - our fear of what was on the bottom, and how far below us the bottom was.
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John Irving |
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ceaf4eb
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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!
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John Irving |
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3b8a13d
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don't worry - so what if there is no life after death? There is life after Garp, believe me.
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John Irving |
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cb5d4f6
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Dr. Larch bent over him and kissed him, very lightly, on his lips. Homer heard Dr. Larch whisper, 'Good work, Homer.' He felt a second, even lighter kiss. 'Good work, my boy,' the doctor said, and then left him. Homer Wells felt his tears come silently; there were more tears than he remembered crying the last time he had cried - when Fuzzy Stone had died and Homer had lied about Fuzzy to Snowy Meadows and the others. He cried and cried, but..
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John Irving |
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94ac54f
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He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
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John Irving |
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87f4bb7
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but only because exhaustion is a life-sign; it is at least a form of being human.
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John Irving |
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0b50c87
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Men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God
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John Irving |
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59ac850
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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.
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John Irving |
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4eea3f2
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Wherever Melony went, she would not be without guidance, she would not be without love, without faith; she had a good book with her. If only she kept reading it and reading it...
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John Irving |
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9d74154
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Jenny Fields felt undone, the way only a person who has been careful can feel when confronted by a mistake.
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John Irving |
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791e745
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But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
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John Irving |
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83fd20b
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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.
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John Irving |
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b97b960
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An affection that was calculated was never trustworthy.
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John Irving |
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fabc926
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he smoked so much marijuana that his hair smelled like a cupboard crammed with oregano;
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John Irving |
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2726111
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It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
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John Irving |
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940e532
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You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who's leaping up and down on a bed.
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John Irving |
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cab884e
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Did anyone who was in love and was unsatisfied with how he was loved in return ever feel saved?
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John Irving |
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ffa0bc0
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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.
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John Irving |
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d92b02d
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I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would still 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.
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John Irving |
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410a140
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There comes a moment in every life when you must let go with your hands--with both hands.
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John Irving |
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d005c7f
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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)
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imagination
parenthood
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John Irving |
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c8f700c
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She was convinced that women were as often victims of themselves as they were of men.
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John Irving |
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470b646
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A terrorist, I think, is simply another kind of pornographer. The pornographer pretends he is disgusted by his work; the terrorist pretends he is uninterested in the means. The ends, they say, are what they care about. But they are both lying. Ernst loved his pornography; Ernst worshiped the means. It is never the ends that matter -- it is only the means that matter. The terrorist and the pornographer are in it for the means. The means is e..
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violence
means-and-ends
pornographer
terrorist
pornography
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John Irving |
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558e228
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ARE THEY ESPECIALLY WILD?
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John Irving |
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131cdfa
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where our desires "come from"; that is a dark, winding road."
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John Irving |
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425f2e1
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a part of adolescence is feeling that there's no one else around who's enough like yourself to understand you.
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John Irving |
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5fc8d10
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but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
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John Irving |
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abff65e
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Of course, apologies are rarely acceptable to true believers - or to anyone who believes in *pure* good, or in pure evil.
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John Irving |
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28d11f8
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She was an expert at the art of sudden appearance.
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John Irving |
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97e36ea
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Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the smallest crisis. If a fight broke out between two small dogs, for example, Ketchum claimed that Bush would call the fire department and ask them to bring a hose; then the president would positio..
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george-w-bush
self-importance
idiocy
incompetence
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John Irving |
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c61b330
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He wanted to take Homer Wells in his arms, and hug him, and kiss him, but he could only hope that Homer understood how much Dr. Larch's self-esteem was dependent on his self-control.
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self-restraint
self-control
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John Irving |
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f20099c
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Moreover, there was what Amy called "the cocksuckers' contingent of the country"--what Danny knew as the dumber-than-dog-shit element, those bully patriots--and they were too set in their ways or too poorly educated (or both) to see beyond the ceaseless flag-waving and nationalistic bluster."
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John Irving |
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a1e4698
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Just accept as a fact that everyone of any emotional importance to you is related to everyone else of any emotional importance to you; these relationships need not extend to blood, of course, but the people who change your life emotionally - all those people, from different places, from different times, spanning many wholly unrelated coincidences - are nonetheless 'related'. We associate people with each other for emotional not for factual ..
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John Irving |