1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
5443
5459
5460
5461
5462
5463
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 366d3e6 | It is never easier to understand the mind of a bomb-wielding anarchist than when standing amid a crush of those ladies and gentlemen who have the money and the temerity to style themselves "New York Society." | Caleb Carr | ||
| ee5a92e | No, since we began this case, another possibility has presented itself to me--the thought that, although my mother cared for her children, their welfare was simply not her first priority. And the real question is not why that should have been so, but why it should have been such a difficult theory to either formulate or accept--why, indeed, it should have taken a murder case to make me think of it. After all, a man who makes his children of.. | Caleb Carr | ||
| b45e226 | troubled than my own--had fallen off a Boston boat and drowned. A lengthy autopsy revealed what I could have | Caleb Carr | ||
| 1148039 | They were members of Maine's very small money class. Their business, as they ridiculously called it, didn't make a cent, but they didn't need to make money; they were born rich. Their needless enterprise consisted of taking people to the wilderness and creating for them the sensation that they were lost there; they also took people shooting down rapids in frail rafts or canoes, creating for them the sensation that they would surely be bashe.. | John Irving | ||
| 139aff9 | The only reason for something to happen in a novel is that it's the perfect thing to have happen at that time. | John Irving | ||
| ebb409e | Candy took the bathing suit from her and used the suit to wipe the tears from Rose Rose's face. "You're fine, you're just fine," Candy said to the girl. "And you're going to feel better. No one's going to hurt you." | John Irving | ||
| 2fd3a40 | I can't read Tess of the d'Urbervilles!" I cried. "It's too hard!" "YOU MEAN IT'S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF READ IT, YOU MEAN IT'S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF PAY ATTENTION," he said. "BUT IT'S NOT TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES THAT'S HARD. THOMAS HARDY MAY BORE YOU BUT HE'S VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND--HE'S OBVIOUS, HE TELLS YOU EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO KNOW." "He tells me more than I want to know!" I cried. "YOUR BOREDOM IS YOUR PROBLEM," said Owen Meany. "I.. | John Irving | ||
| 8dedcea | You remember how I used to tell you that I was Doctor Larch's helper?" Homer asked Angel. "Right," said Angel Wells. "Well, I got very good--at helping him," Homer said. "Very good. I'm not an amateur" | John Irving | ||
| bc18556 | It had been a startling day for young Copperfield: most of the morning confined in an enema-bag carton; his first attempt at flight; his long fall through the weeds; and then sitting on that dead man's face. | John Irving | ||
| ecd3984 | but I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar--you live next to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace. | John Irving | ||
| 573db8f | We can afford the workers' compensation, Harry--he'll watch what he says the time next, won't he?" Nils would say. "The 'next time,' Nils," Grandpa Harry would gently correct his old friend." | John Irving | ||
| 8b5b6b6 | When the ship suddenly pitched more steeply, the bookworm lost his grip. He came skipping over the toilet seats--his ass made a slapping sound--until he collided with my father at the opposite end of the row of toilets. "Sorry--I just had to keep reading!" he said. Then the ship rolled in the other direction, and the soldier sallied forth, skipping over the seats again. When he'd slid all the way to the last toilet, he either lost control o.. | John Irving | ||
| 91141a5 | Like any good novel, it lulled him into an almost tranquil state of awareness before it jolted him - it caught him completely by surprise. | John Irving | ||
| addd49b | Listen to me, Bill," Richard said. "Let the librarian be your new best friend. If you like what she's given you to read, trust her. The library, the theater, a passion for novels and plays - well, Bill, this could be the door to your future. At your age, I lived in a library! Now novels and plays are my life." | John Irving | ||
| 5b14590 | Ciocia Marta (....) w obronie demokracji potrafila stac sie tyranem. | John Irving | ||
| 90cf2ac | His expression I remember from the first time I met him. Open, direct. But no longer anonymous. I know certain telling details now. Like he can't stand his brother and he gets one haircut a year. He likes Raymond Chandler and John Irving, Wallce Stegner and Joan Didion. That he loves the blues and songs that tell stories. Riding the ferries just to be on water. His favorite flavor is caramel. | Judi Hendricks | ||
| 450a867 | Homer Wells non si sentiva in salvo. Chi mai, innamorato e insoddisfatto per come il suo amore e ricambiato, chi mai si sente in salvo? Al contrario, Homer Wells si sentiva preso di mira e perseguitato in modo speciale. | John Irving | ||
| e7d8b9d | Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. --FREDERICK BUECHNER | John Irving | ||
| d4add57 | What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses. | John Irving | ||
| 2d68dc7 | And the thing about being in love," Wally said to Angel, "is that you can't force anyone. It's natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know. And that's hard," he added, "because you often feel like interfering--you want to be the .. | John Irving | ||
| 7e1fb2d | energy begets energy. | John Irving (Author) | ||
| 336bd4c | I walked all the way through the Heldenplatz - the Plaza of Heroes - and stood where thousands of cheering fascists had greeted Hitler, once. I thought that fanatics would always have an audience; all one might hope to influence was the size of the audience. | John Irving | ||
| 9ee2332 | Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. | memories | John Irving | |
| 97188cd | She say to tell you you was the nicest," Muddy told the boy. "She say to tell your dad he a hero, and that you was the nicest." | John Irving | ||
| 75db2fa | Dear God!" the cook cried. "Soon all the wood on Twisted River will be pulpwood--for paper! What about toboggans is worse than paper?" "Books are made from paper!" Ketchum declared. "What role do toboggans play in your son's education?" | John Irving | ||
| 28a7e2c | Old Lowji's nasty remark would haunt Farrokh forever: "Immigrants are immigrants all their lives!" Once someone makes such a negative pronouncement, you might refute it but you never forget it; some ideas are so vividly planted, they become visible objects, actual things." | John Irving | ||
| 8571066 | In other parts of the world, they have double-bed sheets," wrote Wilbur Larch in A Brief History of St. Cloud's. "Here in St. Cloud's we do without--we just do without." | John Irving | ||
| df0d37f | Motherfucking Christ," Gerry said to me on that Christmas Day, 1960. "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 | ||
| 702c4f2 | That Christmastime night, all Mr. Lockley could manage to direct to Elaine was a minimally cordial bow--as if he were saying the unutterable, "Good evening, knocked-up faculty daughter. How are you managing now, you smelly little slut?" | John Irving | ||
| 6962b41 | But comedy is ingrained. A writer doesn't choose to be comic. You can choose a plot, or not to have one. You can choose your characters. But comedy is not a choice; it just comes out that way. | John Irving | ||
| 52dd6f9 | The prostitute became uncomfortable -- as if 'talk' were in a category of aberrant behavior, short of which she drew the line. 'You have to pay more for that,' the redhead said. 'Talk can go on for a long time. | John Irving | ||
| 4475063 | Garp was a natural storyteller; he could make things up, one right after the other, and they seemed to fit. But what did they mean? | John Irving | ||
| ef15bd0 | Later, in her suite at the Stanhope, Ruth resisted calling Eddie. Besides, at the New York Athletic Club, they probably refused to answer the phone after a certain hour. Or else they would demand to know, when you called, if you were wearing a coat and tie. | John Irving | ||
| 272a276 | As a police officer, he'd found that uncontained anger was nothing but a menace to him. Whereas contained anger greatly appealed to him, and he believed that people who weren't angry at all were basically unobservant. | John Irving | ||
| 6bc2a5c | Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn't much of a theory, but it was all Ruth could truly commit herself to at the moment. It was time to retire that old lecture, and her penance was to endure the compliments of her former credo. | writing-craft writing-process | John Irving | |
| 161cd3a | Ruth knew very well what the killer thought he had heard: he'd heard the sound of someone trying not to make a sound - that's what he'd heard. | John Irving | ||
| cc1a739 | Here was the world-famous novelist with her penchant for detail; yet, in her observations of a prostitute with a customer, she had failed to come away with the most important detail of all. She could never identify the murderer; she could barely describe him. She'd made a point of not looking at him! | writers | John Irving | |
| cdfdb65 | Ruth Cole was a novelist; novelists are not at their best when they go off half-cocked. She believed that she would prepare what she was going to tell the police - preferably in writing. | planning writers | John Irving | |
| 6fda3f2 | Treading water, a little dog-paddling--it's a lot like writing a novel, Clark," the dump reader told his former student. "It feels like you're going a long way, because it's a lot of work, but you're basically covering old ground--you're hanging out in familiar territory." | John Irving | ||
| 3e05647 | Owen was so tiny, we loved to pick him up; in truth, we couldn't resist picking him up. We thought it was a miracle: how little he weighed. This was also incongruous because Owen came from a family in the granite business. The Meany Granite Quarry was a big place, the equipment for blasting and cutting the granite slabs was heavy and dangerous-looking; granite itself is such a rough, substantial rock. But the only aura of the granite quarry.. | John Irving | ||
| d33d714 | A man you like, you mean, Tabitha?" my grandmother asked. "I wouldn't mention him if I didn't like him," my mother said. "I want you to meet him," she said to us all. "You've dated him?" my grandmother asked. "No! I just met him--just today, on today's train!" my mother said. "And already you like him?" Lydia asked, in a tone of voice so perfectly copied from my grandmother that I had to look to see which one of them was speaking. "Well, ye.. | John Irving | ||
| d930f6e | With women, Ernie Holm had some experience at taking no for an answer. | John Irving | ||
| 032dd14 | But this is what we do: we dream on, and our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them. That's what happens, like it or not. And because that is what happens, this is what we need: we need a good, smart bear. | John Irving | ||
| 1ff8162 | The code of small towns is simple but encompassing: if many forms of craziness are allowed, many forms of cruelty are ignored. Piggy | John Irving |