Quotes from John Irving

And Juan Diego had selected this particular book because it was in English; he'd wanted more practice reading English, though his less-than-rapt audience (Lupe and Rivera and the disagreeable dog Dirty White) might have understood him better en español.

He was an obstetrician; he delivered babies into the world. His colleagues called this 'the Lord's work.' And he was an abortionist; he delivered mothers, too. His colleagues called this 'the Devil's work,' but it was all the Lord's work to Wilbur Larch. As Mrs. Maxwell had observed: 'The true physician's soul cannot be too broad and gentle.

Caroline O'Day appealed to us, although the breasts of Caroline O'Day were devalued, in Owen's view, by her Catholicism.

THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET AMERICANS TO NOTICE ANYTHING IS TO TAX THEM OR DRAFT THEM OR KILL THEM," Owen said. He said that once—when Hester proposed abolishing the draft. "IF YOU ABOLISH THE DRAFT," said Owen Meany, "MOST AMERICANS WILL SIMPLY STOP CARING ABOUT WHAT WE'RE DOING IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD." I

If your first day of school, like your first tattoo, is a pilgrim experience—well, here was Jack's.

And Clark clearly knew and disapproved of El Nido. (A nido could be a nest, a den, a hole, a haunt.)

I know what's fair, Helen said. I also know what's human

and they all settled into being the kind of friends many old friends become: that is, they were friends when they heard from each other—or when, occasionally, they got together.

You're the biggest secret I know...The only way I know what's going on with you is the only way everyone else knows it. I just have to wait and read your next book.

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." "What

I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar—you live next to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace.

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

I keep saying it and saying it. They publish your novel, they make your screenplay—these books and movies go away. You take your bad reviews with the good ones, or you win an Oscar; whatever happens, it doesn't stay. But

Ora sono qui. Preghiamo insieme. Dio ti aiuta." ("Now I'm here. Let's pray together. God will help you.")

trepid visitors and often announced their presence hours before the knock on the door. "Someone for Grandma," he'd say. Focusing, always focusing. "She's about twenty-four. Or maybe fourteen. She has a blue knapsack. She has an orange with her but I don't think she's going to

We tell him, now, that he might have helped her that time, but in the long run, we know, doom floats.

Both,' Garp wrote, 'were of the opinion that the practice of law was vulgar, but the study of it was sublime.' They

The world has many unintentionally cruel mechanisms that are not designed for people who walk on their hands.

I actually remember my grandfather better as a woman than as a man.

He did so, after the shocking birth of his first child (he was treated at the State University of Iowa hospital in March of 196$ for a fainting spell, following the first look at his gory, swaddled son. 'It's a boy!' the nurse, fresh and dripping from the delivery room, informed him. 'Will it live?' asked Trumper, sliding gelatinous to the floor).

That poor girl wasn't a girl," Señor Eduardo said; he'd glanced once at Lupe, asleep in his lap, just to be sure she was still sleeping. "That poor girl was Flor

Mother and Egg would meet us in Vienna the next day; Sorrow would fly with them.

A lecture on what's universal by a woman who's never once felt sexual desire. And the Pope, who takes vows of chastity, decides the issue of contraception for millions. The world is crazy!' Garp cried.

As a novelist, he was always looking ahead, too.)