Quotes from John Irving

You know, it's not only writers who have this problem, but writers really, really have this problem; for us, a so-called train of thought, though unspoken, is unstoppable.

THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET AMERICANS TO NOTICE ANYTHING IS TO TAX THEM OR DRAFT THEM OR KILL THEM," Owen said.

Garp didn't want a daughter because of men. Because of bad men, certainly; but even, he thought, because of men like me.

Stewart, Jr. who was called Stewie Two, graduated from Steering before Garp was even of age to enter the school; Jenny treated Stewie Two twice for a sprained ankle and once for gonorrhea. He later went through Harvard Business School, a staph infection, and a divorce.

when however small a measure of jealousy is mixed with misunderstanding, there is going to be trouble.

I had acquired an undeniable mystique - if only to the Bancroft butt-room boys. Don't forget: Miss Frost was an older woman, and that goes a long way with boys - even if the older woman has a penis!

What would Miss Frost have thought of me? I wondered; I didn't mean my writing . What would she have thought of my relationships with men and women? Had I ever protected anyone? For whom had I truly been worthwhile?

Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world!

Not every collision course comes as a surprise.

Lies of omission count as lies, sweetie—they can be the worst ones.

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.

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.

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't.

You don't choose your nightmares; they choose you.

The code of small towns is simple but encompassing: if many forms of craziness are allowed, many forms of cruelty are ignored. Piggy

The chain of events, the links in our lives—what leads us where we're going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don't see coming, and what we do—all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, or even obvious.

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.

why Edward Bonshaw had been so attached to it? "A glooming peace this morning with it brings"—well, yes, and why would such darkness ever depart? Who can happily think of what else happened to Juliet and her Romeo, and not dwell on what happened to them at the end of their story?

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.

I think you're being selfish." "What do you mean, selfish?" Wally asked. "A war is for your country, it's serving your country!" "To you, it's an adventure," Candy said. "That's what's selfish about it.

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.

Fucking men.

Rural life in the winter months was rugged: snow-blurred and alcohol-fueled, violent and fast.

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.