Quotes from John Irving

R?pinkit?s savo gyvenimu, - pasak? Zajoncas Harvardo studentams. - Jeigu jau tiek pasiek?te, j?s? profesiniai reikalai tur?t? susitvarkyti savaime.

Homer Wells non si sentiva in salvo. Chi mai, innamorato e insoddisfatto per come il suo amore è ricambiato, chi mai si sente in salvo? Al contrario, Homer Wells si sentiva preso di mira e perseguitato in modo speciale.

They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other. That

It was in looking at sea gulls that it first occurred to Homer Wells that he was free.

You're not like anyone else, Billy - that's what's the matter with you, Donna said.

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.

Things often are as they appear. First impressions matter.

In the sixties, dear Bill, we did not say 'top' and 'bottom' - we said 'pitcher' and 'catcher'...

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.

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.

The operas I loved were nineteenth-century novels!

Greene's writing—he was the first modern writer I liked. Before Greene, my heroes were all novelists from the nineteenth century. Living in the nineteenth century can expand your loneliness; as a writer, it's lonely living there.

Nana never remembered where you stopped reading, and wherever you started Moby-Dick, Mildred Brewster knew exactly where she was in the story. What my grandmother didn't know was where she was in her own story.

It's Shakespearean, Bill; lots of the important stuff in Shakespeare happens offstage - you just hear about it.

They resembled an elderly, long-married couple—devoted to each other without conversation.

For seven of the eight years he was president, Reagan would not say the AIDS word.

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.

I didn't try to say the penis word for Elaine. Cock, I said to her.

You'd better leave your chromosomes at the door.

There was something about the Midwest in her that Wallingford loved.

She felt if she ever had children she would love them no less when they were twenty than when they were two; they might need you more at twenty, she thought. What do you really need when you're two? In the hospital, the babies were the easiest patients. The older they got, the more they needed; and the less anyone wanted or loved them.

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.

But you don't see with hindsight in a first draft. You have to finish the first draft to see what you've missed.

With women, Ernie Holm had some experience at taking no for an answer.