Quotes from John Irving

Idiot Wind." Jack would always remember that song.)

What a phrase that is: "that explains everything!" I know better than to think that anything "explains everything" today.

Canon Campbell told me that most smart-ass Canadians tend to move to the United States. I

What makes the first sentence of A Prayer for Owen Meany such a good one is that the whole novel is contained in it.

And the trick of having faith, he said, was that it was necessary to believe in God without any great or even remotely reassuring evidence that we don't inhabit a godless universe.

If women are Republicans, they've been brainwashed—the men have brainwashed them," Nana said. The nurses at River Bend reported that my grandmother was always saying this. There were residents at River Bend who refused to sit with Nana in the dining hall; probably they were Republicans.

The television's lethal rays pulsate through the living room, clogged with piles of shoes and clothes; and crammed against the sagging couch are the casual bodies of Duncan and Ralph, half in their sleeping bags, asleep (of course), but looking as if the television has murdered them. In the sickly TV light their faces look drained of blood.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness," Rilke had written.

If you're not prepared to watch me die, you'll be worthless to me when the time comes.

Writers who have any audience have more readers than they know. Juan Diego was more famous than he thought.

Just be sure you talk to her, Jack. Ask her everything, while there's still time.

Sorrow," Frank kept repeating, until he fell asleep. "It's Sorrow," he murmured. "You can't kill it," Frank mumbled. "It's Sorrow. It floats.

It's a good job to lose!" Jack called after them, but they kept walking. He was so bad as Melody, even Wild Bill Vanvleck would have made him repeat the line. The point was—he wasn't acting. It was as if he'd forgotten how! Jack still knew his lines, but he was out of character. He had a sister, and he loved her; she'd said she loved him, too. Jack had stopped acting. He was just Jack Burns—the real Jack Burns at last.

When the deranged rooster crowed a third time, his crowing was cut off mid-squawk. "There, that does it," Miriam said. "No more heralding of a false dawn, no more untruthful messengers.

In this dirty-minded world, she thought, you are either somebody's wife or somebody's whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other. If you don't fit either category, then everyone tries to make you think there is something wrong with you.

That was when Angel Wells became a fiction writer, whether he knew it or not. That's when he learned how to make the make-believe matter to him more than real life mattered to him; that's when he learned how to paint a picture that was not real and never would be real, but in order to be believed at all—even on a sunny Indian summer day—it had to be better made and seem more real than real; it had to sound at least possible.

I really like the sex in your novels," Dorothy told him. "I like how you do it." "I like it better," Miriam said to him, giving her daughter an all-knowing look. "I have the perspective to know what really bad sex is," Dorothy's mom told her. "Please, Mother—don't paint us a picture," Dorothy said.

Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. —FREDERICK BUECHNER

È un buon segno piangere per un romanzo» mi assicurò Miss Frost. «Un buon segno?» «Significa che hai più cuore della maggior parte dei tuoi coetanei.»

Well, how could he refuse? Besides, Jack's mom and Mrs. Oastler had no idea how the myth of his writing something, which Emma had so presciently set in motion, was now a reality.

You shouldn't guess about someone's past; if you don't see any evidence of it, a person's past remains unknown to you.)

Frotters!" Herr Faber shouted. "Thieving frotters everywhere I turn!

But he was not acting in this performance—they were.

Such a warm washcloth kind of sympathy was leaking from Dr. Gingrich that Larch felt wet—