Quotes from John Irving

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.

Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer —not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every artist should know: as Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.' Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions. Garp did not write faster than anyone else, or more; he simply always worked with the idea of completion in mind.

There was no solution," Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina, "but the universal solution that life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is forget oneself.

This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people—because, surely, Wally was nice—would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer—and harder, if not impossible, to conceal.

When I first came to Canada, I thought it was going to be easy to be a Canadian; like so many stupid Americans, I pictured Canada as simply some northern, colder, possibly more provincial region of the United States-I imagined it would be like moving to Maine, or Minnesota.

If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

The Winkles appeared to greet the morning vigorously. Although Homer had never heard human beings make love, or moose mate, he knew perfectly well that the Winkles were mating. If Dr. Larch had been present, he might have drawn new conclusions concerning the Winkles' inability to produce offspring. He would have concluded that the violent athleticism of their coupling simply destroyed, or scared to death, every available egg and sperm.

It's long been a point of mine that the freedom of religion, which this country alleges to support, works two ways. We're not only free to practice the religion of our choice, we should be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.

You know what I love... everything.

He felt fortunate to be with Helen; she had her own ambitions and he could not manipulate here.

In every life," Dolores had said, "I think there's always a moment when you must decide where you belong.

I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.

Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away.

And so this added consideration - that she never get pregnant - contributed to the moderation of their coupling, which was almost always managed under conditions harsh enough to win the approval of New England's founding fathers

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.

Let the grave mound grow a little grass, I always say; then it's safe to look.

I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever.

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.

De alguna manera -había argumentado Garp- la vida es demasiado. La vida es un folletín melodramático no apto para menores, John

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 that generate headlines, are pure fat.

It was not necessarily what Ketchum might have said about the war in Iraq, or the never-ending mess in the Middle East, that particularly interested Danny or Six-Pack Pam. It was what Ketchum would have said about anything. It was the old logger's voice that Danny and Six-Pack wanted to hear. Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them

The two old secretaries conversed in the manner of hostile but toothless male dogs.

MADE FOR TELEVISION!' said Owen Meany.

Many of Juan Diego's demons had been his childhood companions-he knew them so well, they were as familiar as friends.