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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 7ba78b7 | I'm sure I'll have more to say about the penis word. | John Irving | ||
| 9c51b51 | There's nothing so confusing as finding out that you don't know someone you thought you knew. | John Irving | ||
| 9b2e871 | If you think you are capable of living without writing, do not write, | John Irving | ||
| 2ec363c | Dr. Gingrich and Mrs. Goodhall had prevailed upon the board of trustees; the board had requested that Larch comply with Dr. Gingrich's recommendation of a 'follow-up report' on the status of each orphan's success (or failure) in each foster home. If this added paperwork was too tedious for Dr. Larch, the board recommended that Larch take Mrs. Goodhall's suggestion and accept an administrative assistant. Don't I have enough history to attend.. | John Irving | ||
| cd95ab3 | That was the night he got up and went to the boys' division; perhaps he was looking for his history in the big room where all the boys slept, but what he found instead was Dr. Larch kissing every boy a late good night. Homer imagined then that Dr. Larch had kissed him like that, when he'd been small; Homer could not have imagined how those kisses, even now, were still kisses meant for him. They were kisses seeking Homer Wells. That was the .. | John Irving | ||
| 881f7e9 | It was Nurse Caroline who introduced Homer to young Dr. Harlow, who was in the throes of growing out his bangs; a cowlick persisted in making his forehead look meager; a floppy shelf of straw-colored hair gave Dr. Harlow's eyes the constant anxiousness of someone peering from under the brim of a hat. 'Oh yes, Wells - our ether expert,' Dr. Harlow said snidely. 'I grew up in an orphanage,' said Homer Wells. 'I did a lot of helping out around.. | John Irving | ||
| d89c8e0 | 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 on TV appalled her. | John Irving | ||
| 1ae53ad | It is simply amazing, at that age, when you're thirteen or fourteen, how you can take being loved for granted, how (even when you are wanted) you can feel utterly alone. | John Irving | ||
| 4700b4a | Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer --not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every artist should know: as Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.' Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions. Garp did not write faster than anyone else, or more; he simply always worked with the idea of completion in mind. | John Irving | ||
| 9121259 | This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people--because, surely, Wally was nice--would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer--and harder, if not impossible, to conceal. | society gossip | John Irving | |
| 671c480 | The Winkles appeared to greet the morning vigorously. Although Homer had never heard human beings make love, or moose mate, he knew perfectly well that the Winkles were mating. If Dr. Larch had been present, he might have drawn new conclusions concerning the Winkles' inability to produce offspring. He would have concluded that the violent athleticism of their coupling simply destroyed, or scared to death, every available egg and sperm. | John Irving | ||
| 3508907 | Someone who hasn't read a novel doesn't really know what it's about, William. | John Irving | ||
| 30c4b3a | Almost everyone is dying to leave home, eventually; and almost everyone needs to. | John Irving | ||
| fc08638 | In every life," Dolores had said, "I think there's always a moment when you must decide where you belong." | John Irving | ||
| 343fca3 | I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable. | John Irving | ||
| 24c2908 | Casey recalled how Gail defended herself in the parking lot of the English & Philosophy Building from the unwanted attentions of a lecherous fellow student, who shall remain nameless. 'Please leave me alone,' Ms Godwin warned the offending student, 'or I shall be forced to wound you with a weapon you can ill afford to be wounded by in a town this small.' The threat was most mysterious, not to mention writerly, but the oafish lecher was not .. | John Irving | ||
| 55d6936 | I met him in the language lab. In a lull between lab sections, I was editing tapes for freshman German when this shuffling man of hair came in. Possibly twenty, or forty; possibly student, or faculty, Trotskyite or Amish farmer, human or animal; a theif lumbering out of a camera shop, laden with lenses and light meters; a bear who after a terrible and violent struggle ate a photographer. This beast approached me. | John Irving | ||
| fb5abfc | the demands of writing and of real life are not always similar. | John Irving | ||
| 8b0c19c | Reagan Declares Firmness on Gulf; Plans are Unclear Isn't that classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm! | John Irving | ||
| 5fd0c52 | Your friend is most original,' Dan Needham said, with the greatest respect. 'Don't you see, Johnny? If he could, he would cut off his hands for you - that's how it makes him feel, to have touched that baseball bat, to have swung that bat with those results. It's how we all feel - you and me and Owen. We've lost a part of ourselves.' And Dan picked up the wrecked armadillo and began to experiment with it on my night table, trying - as I had .. | John Irving | ||
| 44601e4 | There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. | John Irving | ||
| b0f918a | she had wondered which was worse: the sudden good-bye you know is a good-bye or the long good-bye you have to guess. | sadness-love | Rachel Simon | |
| 9f2b356 | He thought that maybe when you're making your way forward into your life, it just looks higgledy-piggledy, the way, if you were a fly walking across one of Beautiful Girl's drawings all you'd be able to see was green, then blue, then yellow. Only if you got in the air before the swat came down would you see the colors belonged to a big drawing, with the green for this part of the picture, the blue and yellow for others, every color being ju.. | Rachel Simon | ||
| c58a7f9 | And Lynnie understood. There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad. p 313 "The sky was crying outside, and as she watched the drops come down, she thought: A rainy day can actually be a very impo.. | Rachel Simon | ||
| fb23b54 | Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together. p 251 | Rachel Simon | ||
| f568eec | she's sad a lot. She's sad in the way Laura wears glasses and Max has freckles and Beth is retarded. There's no reason, it's just the way it is. | Rachel Simon | ||
| 24de549 | I am more human than rational. | humanity rational-thought human-nature | Karen Essex | |
| fdba997 | Least said, soonest mended. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 3ce8953 | Attolians did not invest much belief in their religion. They dutifully attended temple festivals and used their gods for cursing and little else. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 67bacc1 | Do not offend one power to attain the favor of another. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 7b8db29 | Upset at the sight of blood?" he said. "Not my wife, Ornon." "Your blood, " the ambassador pointed out. Eugenides glanced at the hook in his arm and conceded the point. "Yes," he said." | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 302104a | Don't match your weakness against your opponent's strength | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| bbab2cc | The Attolian waited, far and away the best non-speaker I think I have ever known. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 4af22ce | A liar thinks everyone else lies? ... A thief thinks everyone else is stealing from him? ... A philanderer thinks everyone else is philandering. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 8ed0472 | Even a steadfast enemy was better than a waffler. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 5bcdfea | In the evening, after we dance, he rarely returns to the throne; he dances with others or he moves from place to place through the room. The court thinks he is trying to be gracious, sharing his attention. Only I see that he moves always toward the empty spot and the court moves always after him. He is like a dog trying to escape its own tail. He indulged himself in one brief moment of privacy and almost died of it. Relius, he hates being k.. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| ff323f8 | Keeping a private guard this large is like using a wolf to guard the farm. It may keep off the other wolves, but sooner or later it will eat you. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| cfa78af | Weak kings who lost their tempers were notoriously destructive. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 0968190 | The Attolians liked to point out with a snicker that there was no sign anywhere of the king's hand at work. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 20279fe | That won't be necessary," said the magus coolly. "No one would mistake you for anything but a tool, Gen. If a sword is well made, does the credit go to the blacksmith or to his hammer? How much smarter than a hammer can you be if you flaunt the proof of your crimes in a wineshop?" I flushed, and he laughed. If I hadn't already been angry, it might not have seemed unkind laughter." | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 9a3749c | Useless the Elder was looking at me in amusement. "Not exactly stalwart, are you?" he said." | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 3257527 | Surely it is counterproductive to expect sense from someone you are beating senseless. | Megan Whalen Turner | ||
| 6e3c7ca | the notion of civilisation as a thin layer of ice resting upon a deep ocean of darkness and chaos, | Paul Cronin | ||
| b56aa12 | The day when a Frenchman switches from the formality of vous to the familiarity of tu is a day to be taken seriously. It is an unmistakable signal that he has decided - after weeks or months or sometimes years - that he likes you. It would be chulish and unfriendly of you not to return the compliment. And so, just when you are at last feeling comfortable with vous and all the plurals that go with it, you are thrust headlong in to the singul.. | Peter Mayle |