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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 25e9d68 | But 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 to watch on TV appalled her; she had, of course, only read about it. | John Irving | ||
| 3bf59a2 | The other thing preferable about the weekday services is that no one is there against his will. That's another distraction on Sundays. Who hasn't suffered the experience of having an entire family seated in the pew in front of you, the children at war with each other and sandwiched between the mother and father who are forcing them to go to church? An aura of stale arguments almost visibly clings to the hasty clothing of the children. "This.. | John Irving | ||
| c501d9a | but you live your life at the time you live it--you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening. | John Irving | ||
| c288c42 | When, if only for a moment, the novelist steps out of the creator's role, what roles are there for the novelist to step into? There are only creators of stories and characters in stories; there are no other roles. Ruth had never felt such anticipation before. She felt she had absolutely no will to take control of what happened next; in fact, she was exhilarated not to be in charge. She was happy not to be the novelist. She was not the write.. | John Irving | ||
| 48e9b2c | Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me the most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come. | John Irving | ||
| e427f76 | Dan would entertain Owen and me by describing Mr. Tubulari's pentathlon, his "winterthon." "The first event," Dan Needham said, "is something wholesome, like splitting a cord of wood--points off, if you break your ax. Then you have to run ten miles in deep snow, or snowshoe for thirty. Then you chop a hole in the ice, and--carrying your ax--swim a mile under a frozen lake, chopping your way out at the opposite shore. Then you build an igloo.. | John Irving | ||
| d33b2f8 | There is no excuse for cruelty, but--at an orphanage--perhaps we are obliged to withhold love; if you fail to withhold love at an orphanage, you will create an orphanage that no orphan will willingly leave. You will create a Homer Wells--a true orphan, because his only home will always be at St. Cloud's. | John Irving | ||
| c9db4c9 | it struck him as a brilliant accusation to make of anyone who was slightly (or hugely) different. It was the best rumor to start about anyone because it could never be proved or disproved. | John Irving | ||
| 339db53 | Here come the characters who comprise the movie vermin, the Hollywood scum, the film slime--the aforementioned "unscrupulous cowards of mediocrity." Fortunately, they are minor characters, yet so distasteful that their introduction has been delayed as long as possible." | John Irving | ||
| 8316615 | I must part with you for my whole life," she read, with horror. "I must begin a new existence amongst strange faces and strange scenes." The truth of that closed the book for her, forever." | John Irving | ||
| fafc655 | worst of all were the highly unlikely science-fiction novels, or the equally implausible futuristic tales. Couldn't my mom and Nana Victoria see for themselves that I was both mystified and frightened by life on Earth? | John Irving | ||
| 8997385 | Finches are seed eaters, but Dr. Daruwalla didn't know this, nor did the doctor know that the green parrot perching on the vine had feet with two toes pointing forward and two backward. These were the details he missed, and they contributed to the growing list of things he didn't know. This was the kind of Everyman he was--a little lost, a little misinformed (or uninformed), almost everywhere he ever was. | John Irving | ||
| f39a3e3 | not simple intolerance but the tolerance of intolerance, which allows the intolerance to persist. | John Irving | ||
| 3a8afd5 | I have digressed, which is also the kind of writer I would become. | John Irving | ||
| 1b72d9f | It's Shakespearean, Bill; lots of the important stuff in Shakespeare happens offstage - you just hear about it. | John Irving | ||
| 49d2ed0 | Ruth sabia que era afortunada. Se dijo que su proxima novela deberia tratar de la buena suerte, de como la buena suerte y el infortunio se distribuyen de una manera desigual, si no al nacer, por lo menos a medida que se dan las circunstancias sobre las que no tenemos control alguno, asi como los acontecimientos que entran en colision: la gente que conocemos, el momento en que ese conocimiento tiene lugar y si esas personas importantes podri.. | suerte | John Irving | |
| 4ca2e67 | IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT--IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT. | John Irving | ||
| a23e84a | Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don't believe in the resurrection, you're not a believer. | John Irving | ||
| b00fc33 | You should listen to these people, Farrokh," his father was telling him. "It isn't necessary for them to be your moral equals in order for you to learn something from them." | John Irving | ||
| a9d5f65 | 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. | John Irving | ||
| 468e9ff | We were in a phase, through television and the movies, of living only vicariously. Even faintly sordid silliness excited us if it put us in contact with love. | youth | John Irving | |
| 6ff7569 | Vielleicht muss es im Leben eines Schriftstellers diesen Augenblick geben, in dem ein anderer Schriftsteller beschuldigt wird, seinen Beruf verfehlt zu haben. | world er garp sah und welt wie irving john die | John Irving | |
| aa5d42c | Lemties neimanoma izvelgti, nebent jei sapnuoji ar esi apsvaiges is meiles. | fate love | John Irving | |
| 96e9d4e | He might have told Homer, then, that he loved him very much and that he needed something very active to occupy himself at this moment of Homer's departure. | John Irving | ||
| c2d2e48 | It's rare when there's something we can do for ourselves which also pleases someone else. | John Irving | ||
| 4e82639 | You're not like anyone else, Billy - that's what's the matter with you," Donna said." | John Irving | ||
| e41cbce | In the sixties, dear Bill, we did not say 'top' and 'bottom' - we said 'pitcher' and 'catcher'... | John Irving | ||
| 660a073 | The operas I loved were nineteenth-century novels! | John Irving | ||
| a8b75cb | For seven of the eight years he was president, Reagan would not say the AIDS word. | John Irving | ||
| c98c616 | I didn't try to say the word for Elaine. "Cock," I said to her." | John Irving | ||
| 6a39cb4 | You'd better leave your chromosomes at the door. | John Irving | ||
| 6949820 | Nuviliame tik patys save. Turetume pasistengti kuo labiau sumazinti visa ta atsakomybe, kuria jauciames esa skolingi kitiems. | John Irving | ||
| 60f21f9 | Queria trabajar y vivir sola. Eso me convirtio en sexualmente sospechosa. Despues desee tener un hijo sin que para ello tuviera que compartir mi cuerpo ni mi vida. Tambien eso me convirtio en sexualmente sospechosa. | independencia sexualidad | John Irving | |
| 5101b1d | Hago lo que quiero - afirmo Garp -. No le pongas otro nombre. Solo hago lo que me da la gana... y eso es precisamente lo que hizo mi madre toda su vida, o sea lo que queria hacer. | John Irving | ||
| 563c0bb | Escribio que la peor razon para que algo ocurriera en una novela era que hubiera ocurrido realmente. "!Todo ha ocurrido realmente, alguna vez!", rabiaba. "La unica razon para que algo ocurra es que es perfecto que ocurra en ese momento". -Dime cualquier cosa que te haya ocurrido a ti- dijo en cierta ocasion a una entrevistadora- y yo lo mejorare. Puedo mostrar los detalles mejor que como ocurrieron." | libros | John Irving | |
| 1bbf29f | Wat weten Amerikanen eigenlijk van moraal? Ze willen niet dat hun president een penis heeft, maar het doet hen niets als hun president stiekem hulp voor Nicaraguaanse rebellen organiseert nadat het Congres dat heeft verboden; ze willen niet dat hun president zijn vrouw bedriegt, maar het kan hen niets schelen als hun president het Congres bedondert - als hij liegt tegen het volk en de grondwet van het volk schendt. | John Irving | ||
| dd6b26f | Ronkers was getting out of the elevator on the first floor when the intercom paged 'Dr Heart'. There was no Dr Heart at University Hospital. 'Dr Heart' meant someone's heart had stopped. 'Dr Heart?' the intercom asked sweetly. 'Please come to 304 . . .' | John Irving | ||
| 3eb549c | I made some fresh pasta with a neat machine Frank brought from New York; it flattens the dough in sheets and cuts the pasta into any shape you want. It's important to have toys like that, if you live in Maine. | pasta-maker | John Irving | |
| 7159b69 | Three nights at the Hotel zum Storchen --- a decent hotel", Farrokh explained. "Your room overlooks the Limmat. You can walk in the old town, or to the lake. Have you ever been in Europe?" | John Irving | ||
| 0b66d17 | I shared my grandmother's distaste for the word rector--it sounded too much like rectum to be taken seriously. | John Irving | ||
| f89be42 | Since everything that is moved functions as a sort of instrument of the first mover, if there was no first mover, then whatever things are in motion would be simply instruments. Of course, if an infinite series of movers and things moved were possible, with no first mover, then the whole infinity of movers | John Irving | ||
| 1338e67 | Now and forever," Juan Diego said, more confidently. He knew this was a promise to himself--to seize every opportunity that looked like the future, from this moment forward." | John Irving | ||
| 99aa269 | Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite way to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination. Her | John Irving | ||
| 4b8be42 | What I saw in Washington that October were a lot of Americans who were genuinely dismayed by what their country was doing in Vietnam; I also saw a lot of other Americans who were self-righteously attracted to a most childish notion of heroism - namely, their own. They thought that to force a confrontation with soldiers and policemen would not only elevate themselves to the status of heroes; this confrontation, they deluded themselves, would.. | John Irving |