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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| a136f7d | When an orphan is depressed," wrote Wilbur Larch, "he is attracted to telling lies. A lie is at least a vigorous enterprise, it keeps you on your toes by making you suddenly responsible for what happens because of it. You must be alert to lie, and stay alert to keep your lie a secret. Orphans are not the masters of their fates; they are the last to believe you if you tell them that other people are also not in charge of theirs. When you lie.. | lies | John Irving | |
| 14a3189 | And what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence? | institutions rules | John Irving | |
| fa5b47f | At times, he admitted, he had been very happy in the apple business. He knew what Larch would have told him: that his happiness was not the point, or that it wasn't as important as his usefulness. | purpose | John Irving | |
| 88fa95b | Mother's intentions were always sound, never muddy; I don't imagine that she troubled herself to feel very guilty. But the Rev. Mr. Merrill was a man who took to wallowing in guilt; his remorse, after all, was all he had to cling to-especially after his scant courage left him, and he was forced to acknowledge that he would never be brave enough to abandon his miserable wife and children for my mother. He would continue to torture himself, o.. | remorse thinking guilt | John Irving | |
| 5c0f3a2 | IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT- IT'S A GIFT. 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, A Prayer for Owen Meany" | John Irving | ||
| d0919f2 | Lupe was upset that the Japanese honeymooners were wearing surgical masks over their mouths and noses; she imagined the young Japanese couples were dying of some dread disease--she thought they'd come to Of the Roses to beg Our Lady of Guadalupe to save them. "But aren't they contagious?" Lupe asked. "How many people have they infected between here and Japan?" How much of Juan Diego's translation and Edward Bonshaw's explanation to Lupe was.. | John Irving | ||
| 9140275 | But I had to keep my hands under the desk--my fists under the desk, I should say. The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law--they disgrace democracy by claiming that what they do they do for democracy! They should be in jail. They should be in Hollywood! I know that some of the girls have told their parents that I deliver "ranting lectures" to them about the Unite.. | John Irving | ||
| 2999c42 | Father Alfonso and Father Octavio could make Pepe feel as if he were a betrayer of the Catholic faith--as if he were a raving secular humanist, or worse. (Could there be anyone worse, from a Jesuitical perspective?) Father Alfonso and Father Octavio knew their Catholic dogma by rote; while the two priests talked circles around Brother Pepe, and they made Pepe feel inadequate in his belief, they were irreparably doctrinaire. | John Irving | ||
| 45379b2 | Dr. Larch pointed out that Melony had taken Jane Eyre with her; he accepted this as a hopeful sign--wherever Melony went, she would not be without guidance, she would not be without love, without faith; she had a good book with her. If only she'll keep reading it, and reading it, Larch thought. | John Irving | ||
| 222b994 | Lupe's language is just a little different," Juan Diego was saying. "I can understand it." | John Irving | ||
| aab6dc9 | You have taught yourself to read English, too," Pepe said slowly to the boy; the girl suddenly gave him the shivers, for no known reason. "English is just a little different--I can understand it," the boy told him," | John Irving | ||
| b5df809 | Fucking men. | John Irving | ||
| 07160e5 | Thinking of Rooie, he was not entirely alone. He'd even chosen a hotel that he thought Rooie would have liked. Although it was not the most expensive hotel in Zurich, it was too expensive for a cop. But Harry had traveled so little that he'd saved a fair amount of money. He didn't expect the 2nd District to pay for his room at the Hotel Zum Storchen, not even for one night, yet that was where he wanted to stay. It was a charmingly romantic .. | zurich river | John Irving | |
| afeab8a | 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. In Canada, we give directions more freely--to anywhere, to anyone who asks. | John Irving | ||
| d519662 | The Solitude Virgin, Lupe said, was "a white-faced pinhead in a fancy gown." It further irked Lupe that Guadalupe got second-class treatment in the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de la Soledad; the Guadalupe altar was off to the left side of the center aisle--an unlit portrait of the dark-skinned virgin (not even a statue) was her sole recognition. And Our Lady of Guadalupe was indigenous; she was a native, an Indian; she was what Lupe meant by.. | John Irving | ||
| 3003785 | As a self-described Guadalupe girl, Lupe was sensitive to Guadalupe being overshadowed by the "Mary Monster." Lupe not only meant that Mary was the most dominant of the Catholic Church's "stable" of virgins; Lupe believed that the Virgin Mary was also "a domineering virgin." | John Irving | ||
| cf9c2cc | There was a twofold awkwardness attached to Juan Diego's attempts to have sex with the life-size Guadalupe doll--better said, the awkwardness of Juan Diego's imagining he was having sex with the plastic virgin. | John Irving | ||
| 13d3cc4 | Don't ever die," Juan Diego had written to Brother Pepe from Iowa City. What Juan Diego meant was that HE would die if he lost Pepe." | John Irving | ||
| 01b3b5e | There weren't so many transvestite prostitutes in Oaxaca in those days; Flor really stood out, and not only because she was tall. She was almost beautiful; what was beautiful about her truly wasn't affected by the softest-looking trace of a mustache on her upper lip, though Lupe noticed it. | John Irving | ||
| c81cfe4 | Lupe began to recite a list of reasons. "One: love of dogs," she started. "Two: to be stars--in a circus, we might be famous. Three: because the parrot man will come visit us, and our future--" She stopped for a second. "His future, anyway," Lupe said, pointing to her brother. "His future is in the parrot man's hands--I just know it is, circus or no circus." | John Irving | ||
| 3e9ddcc | Always be suspicious of easy work," Dr. Wilbur Larch once said to Homer Wells." | John Irving | ||
| 9d2b7fd | Like the rooftop dogs, they were lost souls--they were running wild, or they drifted around town like ghosts. | John Irving | ||
| 7895ab6 | wherever Melony went, she would not be without guidance, she would not be without love, without faith; she had a good book with her. If only she'll keep reading it, and reading it | John Irving | ||
| 6622c50 | It won't take much of a city to be a city for me | John Irving | ||
| c78840a | Even Clark French's novels exerted a tenacious and combative goodwill: his main characters, lost souls and serial sinners, always found redemption; the act of redeeming usually followed a moral low point; the novels predictably ended in a crescendo of benevolence. | John Irving | ||
| 705f0cd | never spoke of it. He took the miracle to his grave. All Andrew ever said about the voyage was that a nun had taught him how to play mah-jongg. Something must have happened during one of their games. | John Irving | ||
| d1dea3c | Well, that boy's voice," my grandmother told me, "that boy's voice could bring those mice back to life!" And it occurs to me now that Owen's voice was the voice of all those murdered mice, coming back to life--with a vengeance." | John Irving | ||
| d714da5 | If you want to worry about something, you ought to worry about how Guadalupe was looking at you. Like she's still making up her mind about you. Guadalupe hasn't decided about you," the clairvoyant child had told him." | John Irving | ||
| f0ba59a | It was best not to ask Pepe if reading or Jesus had saved him, or which one had saved him more. | John Irving | ||
| 1fa4abc | GUYS," Owen Meany said. That spring, less than a month before Gravesend Academy's graduation exercises, the TV showed us a map of Thailand; five thousand U.S. Marines and fifty jet fighters were being" | John Irving | ||
| 0454083 | IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT--IT'S A GIFT. 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 | ||
| 15c4b13 | Most dump kids are believers; maybe you have to believe in something when you see so many discarded things. | John Irving | ||
| 9cd3cbd | If Garp was going to play lacrosse, Jenny thought, where would he go? Not out, because it's dark; he'd lose the ball. | John Irving | ||
| 0a7eb83 | He hadn't known many British, but some of them seemed crazy to him, and so it seemed a small thing to agree to--and Wally thought it was wise to agree with whoever it was who held the catheter. | John Irving | ||
| 08212be | Ad majorem Dei gloriam--to the greater glory of God. | John Irving | ||
| 1d854cf | Technical Sergeant Garp, the late gunner whose familiarity with violent death cannot be exaggerated, served with the Eighth Air Force - the air force that bombed the Continent from England. | John Irving | ||
| 01a075a | But Lupe both genuinely worshiped Our Lady of Guadalupe and fiercely doubted her; Lupe's doubt was borne by the child's judgmental sense that Guadalupe had submitted to the Virgin Mary--that Guadalupe was complicitous in allowing Mother Mary to be in control. | John Irving | ||
| 1146c34 | Don't grown-ups ever get over things? | John Irving | ||
| d386bf0 | An aura of fate had marked him. He moved slowly; he often appeared to be lost in thought, or in his imagination--as if his future were predetermined, and he wasn't resisting it. | John Irving | ||
| 205c358 | And you wouldn't want to bring her home--at least not to entertain your guests or amuse the children. No, Juan Diego thought--you would want to keep her, all for yourself. | John Irving | ||
| 2b5e147 | POKUD TI NA NECEM ZALEZI, MUSIS SI TO CHRANIT; POKUD MAS TO STESTI, ZE JSI NASEL ZPUSOB ZIVOTA, KTERY TI VYHOVUJE, MUSIS NAJIT ODVAHU HO ZIT. | John Irving | ||
| d78db3a | As a fourteen-year-old, he'd not been old enough to have sympathy for her--for either the child or the adult that she was. | John Irving | ||
| 4eaf584 | What a power I had discovered! I felt certain I could refill those bleacher seats--one day, I was sure, I could "see" everyone who'd been there; I could find that special someone my mother had waved to, at the end." | John Irving | ||
| f13ce5e | They were childless--Dan Needham suggested that their sexual roles might be so "reversed" as to make childbearing difficult--and their attendance at Little League games was marked by a constant disapproval of the sport: that little girls were not allowed to play in the Little League was an example of sexual stereotyping that exercised the Dowlings' humorlessness and fury. Should they have a daughter, they warned, she would play in the Littl.. | John Irving |