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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| ec2f166 | The night she died, Dan found her propped up in her hospital bed; she appeared to have fallen asleep with the TV on and with the remote-control device held in her hand in such a way that the channels kept changing. But she was dead, not asleep, and her cold thumb had simply attached itself to the button that restlessly roamed the channels--looking for something good." At the time, in 1989, it seemed a fairly unusual way to die. Nowadays, I .. | John Irving | ||
| aa00c17 | Jenny Fields discovered that you got more respect from shocking other people than you got from trying to live your own life with a little privacy. | John Irving | ||
| 6a30ac3 | Dr. Gingrich, who was increasingly fascinated with the leaps of Mrs. Goodhall's mind, was still marveling over the confusing image of a nonpracticing homosexual; it struck him as a brilliant accusation to make of anyone who was slightly (or hugely) different. | John Irving | ||
| 9420a69 | A novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more complicated than it seems at the beginning. | writing-life | John Irving | |
| 07f9d04 | Oh, what a nation of moralists the Americans are! With what fervor do they relish bringing their sexual misconduct to light! A pity that they do not bring their moral outrage to bear on their president's arrogance above the law; a pity that they do not unleash their moral zest on an administration that runs guns to terrorists. But, of course, boudoir morality takes less imagination, and can be indulged in without the effort of keeping up wi.. | John Irving | ||
| 32b388a | My mother and I smoked a cigarette; she was trying to quit as I was trying to start. Therefore, we shared a cigarette between us- in fact, we'd promised never to smoke a whole one alone. | John Irving (Author) | ||
| 2e3d4d2 | Among these contemptuous women, poor Germaine had the disadvantage of being young--and almost pretty, in a shy, mousy way. She possessed the nonspecific clumsiness of someone who makes such a constant effort to be inconspicuous that she is creatively awkward--without meaning to, Germaine hoarded attention to herself; her almost electric nervousness disturbed the atmosphere surrounding her. | John Irving | ||
| e0ab298 | one of the more sophisticated and accepting things about Europe, when it came to difficult decisions regarding sexual identity, was that the Europeans were so used to sexual differences that they had already begun to make fun of them. | John Irving | ||
| 2290088 | You know, it's not only writers who have this problem, but writers really, have this problem; for us, a so-called train of thought, though unspoken, is unstoppable. | John Irving | ||
| 666a9d0 | THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET AMERICANS TO NOTICE ANYTHING IS TO TAX THEM OR DRAFT THEM OR KILL THEM," Owen said." | John Irving | ||
| d89d87f | I had acquired an undeniable mystique - if only to the Bancroft butt-room boys. Don't forget: Miss Frost was an woman, and that goes a long way with boys - even if the older woman has a penis! | John Irving | ||
| 9f575c5 | What would Miss Frost have thought of me? I wondered; I didn't mean my . What would she have thought of my relationships with men and women? Had I ever "protected" anyone? For whom had I truly been worthwhile?" | John Irving | ||
| 67153e9 | Your disapproval is noted. It is legitimate. You are welcome to disapprove. But you are not welcome to be ignorant, to look the other way, to be unable to perform--should you change your mind. | John Irving | ||
| 21e23aa | Helen Holm habia pasado toda su vida en tardes de tres horas sentada en las salas de lucha, desde Iowa hasta Steering, observando a muchachos de diversa complexion, sudorosos y entrelazados. Helen senalaria, anos mas tarde, que el hecho de haber pasado su infancia en una sala de lucha libre la habia convertido en una lectora. "Naci para ser espectadora", decia Helen. "Me crie para ser voyeur." | John Irving | ||
| 4d067d0 | Rural life in the winter months was rugged: snow-blurred and alcohol-fueled, violent and fast. | John Irving | ||
| fd3544b | Meaning Michael Milton; meaning the whole thing. | John Irving | ||
| 009af69 | According to my mother, I was a fiction writer before I'd written any ficton, by wich she meant not only that I invented things, or made things up, but that I prefered this kind of fantasising or pure imagining to what other people generally liked - she meant reality, of course. | John Irving | ||
| 778dfe9 | return trips, to this day...are simply invitations to dull trances or leaden slumber, | John Irving | ||
| 83886ba | Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day: what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. | John Irving | ||
| ca64705 | Whoever acquired any real or substantive intelligence from reading newspapers? I'm sure I have no in-depth comprehension of American villany; yet I can't leave the news alone! You'd think I might profit from my experience with ice cream. If I have ice cream in my freezer, I'll eat it--I'll eat all of it, all at once. Therefore, I've learned not to buy ice cream. Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues .. | John Irving | ||
| 52544c5 | There were some very good books in the backseat of the little Volkswagen; good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands--you could not hold faith in Jesus in your hands, not in quite the same way you could hold good books. | John Irving | ||
| a12b42c | IF WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER FOUR SECONDS, WE CAN DO IT IN UNDER THREE," he said. "IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE MORE FAITH." "It takes more practice," I told him irritably. "FAITH TAKES PRACTICE," said Owen Meany." | John Irving | ||
| 3d1e8bd | Every time you throw a snail off the dock," Ray teased Homer Wells, "you're making someone start his whole life over." "Maybe I'm doing him a favor," said Homer Wells, the orphan." | John Irving | ||
| 5915692 | The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue. | death end family friends inspiration life love memories memory nostalgia relationships thoughts | John Irving | |
| 6ab79c7 | What the hell is the matter with Eddie? Ruth was thinking. If he doesn't stop staring at me, I'm going to drive off the road! Hannah had also noticed that Eddie was staring at Ruth. What the hell is the matter with Eddie? Hannah was thinking. Since when did the asshole take an interest in a younger woman? | John Irving | ||
| ede1d33 | It was not out of love that I wanted to meet my father, but out of the darkest curiosity - to be able to recognize, in myself, what evil I might be capable of. | John Irving | ||
| ae09fbd | Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!" Larch blurted hastily. ..."In a better world..." she began patiently. "No, not in a better world!" he cried. "In this one--in this world. I take this world as a given. Talk to me about this world!" ... "Oh, I can't always be right," Larch said tiredly. "Yes, I know," Nurse Caroline said sympathetically. "It's because even a good man can't always be right that we ne.. | institutions laws rules | John Irving | |
| e2370d3 | in the hospital, Jenny Fields felt she was making up for lost time; she was discovering that people weren't much more mysterious, or much more attractive, than clams. | John Irving | ||
| c3f57c7 | Not every collision course comes as a surprise. | John Irving | ||
| 7c5f4f2 | A man named Hero washed the press cloths; Meany Hyde told Homer that the man had been a kind of hero, once. 'That's all I heard. He's been comin' here for years, but he was a hero. Just once,' Meany added, as if there might be more shame attached to the rarity of the man's heroism than there was glory to be sung for his moment in the sun. | John Irving | ||
| 267b24d | Again, Homer felt the nudge in his ribs, and Mr. Rose said, mildly, 'You all so uneducated - Homer's havin' a little fun with you.' When the bottle of rum passed from man to man, Mr. Rose just passed it along. 'Don't the name Homer mean nothin' to you?' Mr. Rose asked the men. 'I think I heard of it,' the cook Black Pan said. 'Homer was the world's first storyteller!' Mr. Rose announced. The nudge at Homer's ribs was back, and Mr. Rose said.. | John Irving | ||
| d5da1f1 | In Wally's bedroom Homer marveled at how the world was simultaneously being invented and destroyed. Nothing marvelous about that, Dr. Larch would have assured him. At St. Cloud's, except for the irritation about sugar stamps and other aspects of the rationing, very little was changed by the war. (Or by what people once singled out as the Depression, thought Wilbur Larch.) We are an orphanage; we provide these services; we stay the same - if.. | John Irving | ||
| 25e7fba | What a new sense of security Homer had felt in that moment of laughter with friends in the enclosed dark of the moving car, and what a sense of freedom the car itself gave to him--its seemingly effortless journeying was a wonder to Homer Wells, for whom the idea of motion (not to mention the sense of change) was accomplished only rarely and only with enormous strife. | John Irving | ||
| bd279a6 | Doris Wales was a woman with straw-blond hair whose body appeared to have been dipped in corn oil; then she must have put her dress on, wet. The dress grabbed at all her parts, and plunged and sagged over the gaps in her body; a lover's line of hickeys, or love bites - 'love-sucks,' Franny called them - dotted Doris's chest and throat like a violent rash; the welts were like wounds from a whip. She wore plum-covered lipstick, some of which .. | John Irving | ||
| 138902c | But the available light in Twisted River was dim and growing dimmer. The dance-hall door blew (or was slammed) closed, cutting off Teresa Brewer as suddenly as if Six-Pack had taken the singer's slender throat in her hands. When the dance-hall door blew (or was kicked) open again, Tony Bennett was crooning "Rags to Riches." Dominic didn't for a moment doubt that the town's eternal violence was partly spawned by irredeemable music." | John Irving | ||
| 536103f | The Winkles were in the business of manufacturing sensations for people who were so removed from any sensations of their own making or circumstances that only high (but simulated) adventure could provoke response from them at all. Dr. Larch was not impressed with the Winkles' "business"; he knew they were simply rich people who did exactly what they wanted to do and needed to call what they did something more serious-sounding than play. Wha.. | John Irving | ||
| 55a4bda | Ah, well..." I started to say, and then stopped. So that was where he was going; I'd heard it before. Richard had told me that I'd not been standing in my mother's shoes in 1942, when I was born; he'd said I couldn't, or shouldn't, judge her. It was my not forgiving her that irked him-it was my intolerance of her intolerance that bugged him." | John Irving | ||
| ffd3940 | And Juan Diego had selected this particular book because it was in English; he'd wanted more practice reading English, though his less-than-rapt audience (Lupe and Rivera and the disagreeable dog Dirty White) might have understood him better en espanol. | John Irving | ||
| 34e9141 | He was asleep--he was still dreaming--though his lips were moving. No one heard him; no one hears a writer who's writing in his sleep. | John Irving | ||
| 9c98401 | THERE'S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE,' said Owen Meany. | John Irving | ||
| 72403b0 | So we do not lose heart...Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal...So we are always of good courage. We know that while .. | John Irving | ||
| dd9fd82 | Flor and Juan Diego and Lupe were the Iowan's projects; Edward Bonshaw saw them through the eyes of a born reformer, but he did not love them less for looking upon them in this fashion. | John Irving | ||
| 8555383 | What Brother Pepe saw in Edward Bonshaw was a man who looked like he belonged--like a man who had never felt at home, but who'd suddenly found his place in the scheme of things. | John Irving | ||
| 0568413 | Sic transit gloria mundi. | John Irving |