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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 3f5c1f6 | 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 | ||
| 33c4ceb | Homer Wells, listening to Big Dot Taft, felt like her voice - dulled. Wally was away, Candy was away, and the anatomy of a rabbit was, after Clara, no challenge; the migrants, whom he'd so eagerly anticipated, were just plain hard workers; life was just a job. He had grown up without noticing when? Was there nothing remarkable in the transition? | John Irving | ||
| 4a5f993 | 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-- tha.. | John Irving | ||
| 010828b | Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be. | critics first-person-narrative writing-life | John Irving | |
| e8ee02a | The two old secretaries conversed in the manner of hostile but toothless male dogs. | John Irving | ||
| 8eb2ea1 | Mr. Wiggin injected a kind of horror-movie element into the Christmas miracle; to the rector, every Bible story was-if properly understood-threatening. | John Irving | ||
| a79b27e | What is this fascination the world has with death? | John Irving | ||
| d8439d6 | She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story - not necessarily what did happen or what had happened. | truth writing-craft | John Irving | |
| 43409cf | You can't possibly know that you're going to be a writer!" Miss Frost said. "It's not a career choice." | John Irving | ||
| 2c4ec8b | Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic," Richard told me. "And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious." | John Irving | ||
| b06fcc9 | God, I think I just hit a high E-flat - and I really 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 | ||
| 185c2e5 | That was when Angel Wells became a fiction writer, whether he knew it or not. That's when he learned how to make the make-believe matter to him more than real life mattered to him; that's when he learned how to paint a picture that was not real and never would be real, but in order to be believed at all- even on a sunny Indian summer day- it had to be better made and seem more real than real; it had to sound at least possible. | John Irving | ||
| a6fd013 | Mr. Merrill was most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith's opposite. | John Irving | ||
| c11f92f | What do you think I imagine making love to a vagina would be like? Maybe like having sex with a ballroom! | vagina | John Irving | |
| 8e0a7a7 | 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." | sex | John Irving | |
| 70fcbaa | Isn't it perfectly possible that Nils and his wife are too depressed to have kids? The prospect of having kids depresses the shit out of me, and I'm neither suicidal nor Norwegian! | John Irving | ||
| fcb9ecc | There were those apres-sex moments when, in a half-asleep or forgetting that I was with a woman, I would reach out and touch her vagina- only to suddenly pull back my hand, as if surprised. | John Irving | ||
| 4f7a4e7 | David Copperfield had a fever when he'd gone to bed, and Larch went to check on the boy. Dr. Larch was relieved to feel that young Copperfield's fever had broken; the boy's forehead was cool, and a slight sweat chilled the boy's neck, which Larch carefully rubbed dry with a towel. There was not much moonlight; therefore, Larch felt unobserved. He bent over Copperfield and kissed him, much in the manner that he remembered kissing Homer Wells.. | John Irving | ||
| cb0a436 | it was a feeling with nowhere to go. Was that what love was, and how it came to you--leaving you no options for its use? | John Irving | ||
| 12327fc | 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 | ||
| 651dd39 | Further along" is fairly specific compared to other New Hampshire forms of directions; we don't enjoy giving directions in New Hampshire--we tend to think that if you don't know where you're going, you don't belong where you are." -- | John Irving | ||
| 353cd30 | For Homer Wells, it was different. He did not imagine leaving St. Cloud's. The Princes of Maine that Homer saw, the Kings of New England that he imagined -- they reigned at the court of St. Cloud's, they traveled nowhere; they didn't get to go to sea; they never even saw the ocean. But somehow, even to Homer Wells, Dr. Larch's benediction was uplifting, full of hope. These Princes of Maine, these Kings of New England, these orphans of St. C.. | John Irving | ||
| 1e20652 | MADE FOR TELEVISION!' said Owen Meany. | John Irving | ||
| 4668fe8 | Many of Juan Diego's demons had been his childhood companions-he knew them so well, they were as familiar as friends. | John Irving | ||
| 260f47a | What worse awareness is there than to know there would have been a better outcome if you'd never done anything at all? | John Irving | ||
| 73338e8 | Bill is a writer, but he writes in the first-person voice in a style that is tell-all confessional; in fact, his fiction sounds as much like a memoir as he can make it sound. | John Irving | ||
| a82a8cf | Juan Diego lived there, in the past--reliving, in his imagination, the losses that had marked him. | John Irving | ||
| a84aee2 | If you live long enough, Bill - it's a world of epilogues," Richard Abbott said." | John Irving | ||
| 9dd613e | Real life is too sloppy a model for good fiction," Juan Diego had said." | John Irving | ||
| 6534fe1 | On his bedside table, between the reading lamp and the telephone, was his battered copy of David Copperfield. Homer didn't have to open the book to know how the story began. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," he recited from memory." | purpose | John Irving | |
| f5d9a54 | Remember, Juan Diego--you are a reader," Senor Eduardo said to the worried-looking boy. "There is a life in books, and in the world of your imagination; there is more than the physical world, even here." | John Irving | ||
| bc5e93b | JUST THINK OF THIS AS MY LITTLE GIFT TO YOU," says Owen Meany" | John Irving | ||
| abf3965 | She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time--a childish self-indulgence, even messier than finger painting--but she admired reading, which she believed was an unselfish activity that provided information and inspiration. She must have thought it a pity that some poor fools had to waste their lives writing in order for us to have s.. | writing | John Irving | |
| 8648d30 | Homer Wells was in Wally's room, reading David Copperfield and thinking about Heaven - '...that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.' I think I would prefer to love Candy here, 'on earth,' Homer Wells was thinking - when Olive interrupted them. | John Irving | ||
| c28d23e | Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela's empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch's reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer was inclined to hurry - in order not to miss the bedtime story. | John Irving | ||
| 24bc56f | Remember," Duncan asked on the plane, "how Walt asked if it was green or brown?" Both Garp and Duncan laughed. But it was neither green nor brown, Garp thought. It was me. It was Helen. It was the color of bad weather. It was the size of an automobile." | John Irving | ||
| 76e7098 | At that moment, everyone walks on the sky. Maybe all great decisions are made without a net," The Wonder herself had told him. "There comes a time, in every life, when you must let go." | John Irving | ||
| 068722b | The student and the teacher had contrasting ideas about the sentence, which was: "There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." | John Irving | ||
| 660cedf | It often happens with grown-ups that their tears are misunderstood. (Who can know which time in their lives they are reliving?) | John Irving | ||
| 594543a | Where were you all this time? she said. Where have you been? I guess far away. Yes you were. Too far away. They sat in silence. You know you frightened me a little, she said. At the beginning. No. You did. He smiled at that. You looked as if you didnt anyone, she said. | Susan Minot | ||
| 4dd8077 | He has asked himself sometimes if solitude is preferable to boredom or betrayal, which seemed to be the inevitable end of all happy love affairs, of all happy marriages. People clung to one another out of fear. K.D. has preferred the integrity of being alone. He was a realist, he is. He has the strength to face death alone. | Vikram Chandra | ||
| d8f16d8 | The future is simple. The future is simple, I can hold it i the palm of my hand; and the present is just a matter of endurance, detachment, and a sense of humor. | Vikram Chandra | ||
| 2716894 | So now that began to develop into a full-fledged shouting match of its own, and all in all it was soon a full-scale old-style Bombay tamasha, with people watching from every balcony and window in every building, up and down the road, laughing and giving advice and yelling at each other. | Vikram Chandra | ||
| f3cf571 | Follow your inclination. It will take you to the thoughts you'd never known you'd had. | Rachel Simon |