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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 28b22ed | WHAT I'M TELLING YOU IS, IF YOU WANT TO DO THINGS YOUR OWN WAY, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION - YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A LITTLE COURAGE. | decision-making | John Irving | |
| 1e755e1 | Anne-Elisabeth had taken the music from Dr. Horvath and was looking through it. 'I see finger-cramping possibilities, William - of them,' she told him. I see ,' William said, winking at her. ' of it. | John Irving | ||
| bd32943 | 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 interpret the gospel for you | John Irving | ||
| 90efc39 | Amy Martin (ladysky) and Daniel Baciagalupo had a month to spend on Charlotte Turner's island in Georgian Bay; it was their wilderness way of getting to know each other before their life together in Toronto began. We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who o.. | John Irving | ||
| a42df42 | It seemed to Dr. Daruwalla that his story was the opposite of universal; his story was simply strange - the doctor himself was singularly foreign. | John Irving | ||
| 7aa190e | It is the well educated who will improve society--and they will improve it, at first, by criticizing it, and we are giving them the tools to criticize it. Naturally, as students, the brighter of them will begin their improvements upon society by criticizing us." To Owen, old Archie Thorndike would sing a slightly different song: "It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change. I'm .. | John Irving | ||
| dcaf1f7 | nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something. | John Irving | ||
| 61bef8e | YOUR BOREDOM IS YOUR PROBLEM," said Owen Meany. "IT'S YOUR LACK OF IMAGINATION THAT BORES YOU. HARDY HAS THE WORLD FIGURED OUT. TESS IS DOOMED. FATE HAS IT IN FOR HER. SHE'S A VICTIM; IF YOU'RE A VICTIM, THE WORLD WILL USE YOU. WHY SHOULD SOMEONE WHO'S GOT SUCH A WORKED-OUT WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD BORE YOU? WHY SHOULDN'T YOU BE INTERESTED IN SOMEONE WHO'S WORKED OUT A WAY TO SEE THE WORLD? THAT'S WHAT MAKES WRITERS INTERESTING!" | imagination literature | John Irving | |
| cfbd44c | The situation Larch was thinking of was war, the so-called war in Europe; Larch, and many others, feared that the war wouldn't stay there. ('I'm sorry, Homer,' Larch imagined having to tell the boy. 'I don't want you to worry, but you have a bad heart; it just wouldn't stand up to a war.') What Larch meant was that his own heart would never stand up to Homer Wells's going to war. The love of Wilbur Larch for Homer Wells extended even to his.. | John Irving | ||
| a621bb5 | You've witnessed what you c-c-c-call a miracle and now you believe-you believe everything," Pastor Merrill said. "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." | John Irving | ||
| e187b27 | Melony put herself straight to bed without her dinner. Mrs. Grogan, worried about her, went to Melony's bed and felt her forehead, which was feverish, but Mrs. Grogan could not coax Melony to drink anything. All Melony said was, 'He broke his promise.' Later, she said, 'Homer Wells has left St. Cloud's.' 'You have a little temperature, dear,' said Mrs. Grogan, but when Homer Wells didn't come to read Jane Eyre aloud that evening, Mrs. Groga.. | John Irving | ||
| f7afedc | there was no better company for an especially personal revelation than the company of virtual strangers. | John Irving | ||
| baee115 | When I first came to Canada, I thought it was going to be easy to be a Canadian; like so many stupid Americans, I pictured Canada as simply some northern, colder, possibly more provincial region of the United States-I imagined it would be like moving to Maine, or Minnesota. | John Irving | ||
| ccb662f | As for Jenny, she felt only that women - just like men - should at least be able to make conscious decisions about the course of their lives; if that made her a feminist, she said, then she guessed she was one. | John Irving | ||
| b22f2d1 | The day women stop reading--that's the day the novel dies! | John Irving | ||
| a4757a5 | Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee?" "He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,'" I explained. Dan got out the dictionary , then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing at himself saying, "That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous!" And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was--a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die.. | John Irving | ||
| bacbfae | 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? | memory nostalgia | John Irving | |
| 4535ab1 | I'm just a woman with a penis!" she would say, her voice rising." | John Irving | ||
| 6f66602 | You should wait, William," Miss Frost said. "The time to read is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences." | John Irving | ||
| 84fff2f | Of course, everyone is intolerant of something or someone. | John Irving | ||
| 0d092da | As for the river, it just kept moving,as river do--as rivers do. Under the logs, the body of the young Canadian moved with the river, which jostled him to and fro--to and fro. If, at this moment in time Twisted River also appeared restless, even impatient, maybe the river itself wanted the boy's body to move on, too, move on, too. | John Irving | ||
| 88ef2b5 | Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement,'" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives." | knowledge religion thought | John Irving | |
| 4be805d | He felt like hearing Mrs. Grogan's prayer again, and so he went to the girls' division a little early for his usual delivery of Jane Eyre. He eavesdropped in the hall on Mrs. Grogan's prayer; he thought, then wondered if it would confuse the boys coming so quickly on the heels of, or just before, the Princes of Maine, Kings of New England benediction. I get confused myself sometimes, Dr. Larch knew. ' Mrs. Grogan was saying, Amen, though.. | John Irving | ||
| 5a1d074 | Only the chicken-lover will understand me. He will give me a kindly look, maybe mildly desirous. His eyes will tell me: You might look a lot better with some reddish-brown feathers. | John Irving | ||
| 807a523 | People regard art too highly, and history not enough | common-sense history | John Irving | |
| a17e7ac | By '95 - in New York, alone - more Americans had died of AIDS than were killed in Vietnam. | John Irving | ||
| 54d43c0 | DREAMS EDIT THEMSELVES; DREAMS are ruthless with details. Common sense does not dictate what remains, or is not included, in a dream. A two-minute dream can feel like forever. | John Irving | ||
| 4c8e3bb | Garp discovered that when you are writing something, everything seems related to everything else. | John Irving | ||
| 9f879d3 | Franny's Hollywood name, her acting name, is one you know. This is our family's story, and it's inappropriate for me to use Franny's stage name - but I know that you know her. Franny is the one you always desire. She is the best one, even when she's the villain; she always the real hero, even when she dies, even when she dies for love - or worse, for war. She's the most beautiful, the most unapproachable, but the most vulnerable too, someho.. | John Irving | ||
| 0fcfada | His resolve was blown as quickly as the rest of him. | John Irving | ||
| bfd4b43 | He had made his decision. Later in life Ann would learn that when certain men made decisions no matter how much it might torture them afterwards they would stick with their decision. Men, she learned, would rather suffer than change their minds or their habits. They could develop elaborate systems for containing pain, sometimes so successful they would remain completely unaware of the vastness of the pain they possessed. | men pain | Susan Minot | |
| ef153cc | All her life she'd listened to talk, life was full of talk. People said things, true and interesting things and ridiculous things. Her father used to say they talked too much. There was much to say, she had said her share. How else was one to know a thing except by naming it? But words now fell so far from where life was. Words fell on a distant shore. It turned out there were other tracks on which life registered where things weren't ackno.. | Susan Minot | ||
| 900a579 | she realized it was not the rereading that led to fresh insights. It was the rereader--because when a person is changing inside, there are inevitably new things to see | Rachel Simon | ||
| 603f3b1 | Sometimes you think you know what you want, she said, hugging her children, until you see how much more you can have. | Rachel Simon | ||
| 2f1eeab | He thought that when he had healed sufficiently, and withdrawn from the capital, he might write the magus a letter and open a correspondence on Euclid, or Thales, or the new idea from the north, that the sun and not the Earth might be the centre of the universe. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 599cc0d | If I was going to climb onto an animal eight times my size, I wanted to plan the attempt first. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| e84adf2 | Mother why does the River not rise It is not the River's time Why does the seed not sprout It is not the seed's time Why does the rain not fall the leaf not unfurl itself Where is the hind and why does she not graze the fields before us it is not their time The River knows its time The seed knows its time The rain the leaf and the hind They know their time The River will rise the seed will sprout The rains come down and the leaves unfurl T.. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 34bd9a9 | I want my breakfast. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| e295fe4 | Only through pain can you be sure of the truth | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 78eae5c | Next to the defeated politician, the writer is the most vocal and inventive griper on earth. He sees hardship and unfairness wherever he looks. His agent doesn't love him (enough). The blank sheet of paper is an enemy. The publisher is a cheapskate. The critic is a philistine. The public doesn't understand him. His wife doesn't understand him. The bartender doesn't understand him. These are only some of the common complaints of working writ.. | Peter Mayle | ||
| 6ab09cb | Apart from the peace and emptiness of the landscape, there is a special smell about winter in Provence which is accentuated by the wind and the clean, dry air. Walking in the hills, I was often able to smell a house before I could see it, because of the scent of woodsmoke coming from an invisible chimney. It is one of the most primitive smells in life, and consequently extinct in most cities, where fire regulations and interior decorators h.. | provence | Peter Mayle | |
| e937738 | It was such an infantile prayer, the sort of prayer a five-year-old might pray. But maybe those were the best kind. | Michel Faber | ||
| 362acbc | I sometimes think that the only things really worth talking about are the things people absolutely refuse to discuss. | Michel Faber | ||
| 54a71cc | Why was even the shallowest human conversation so fraught with pitfalls and tricky calibrations? Why couldn't people just keep silent until they had something essential to say, like the Oasans? | Michel Faber |