Quotes from John Irving

Death, it seems," Garp wrote, "does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.

We are formed by what we desire

You cannot drive with your eyes in the rear-view mirror… But dignity is difficult to maintain. Stamina requires constant upkeep. Repetition is boring. And you pay for grace.

If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.

Life is serious but art is fun!

the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.

The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.

Logic is relative.

All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man.

and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.

Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.

All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.

I'm not afraid, but I'm very nervous.

Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?

Half my life is an act of revision.

If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital.

I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.

Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.

Sorrow floats.

Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.

How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.

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