Quotes About Destiny

Amazing! said Mr. McSwiney. You've got a permanently fixed larynx, he told Owen. I've rarely seen such a thing, he said. Your voice box is never in repose - your Adam's apple sits up there in the position of a permanent scream. I could try giving you some exercises, but you might want to see a throat doctor; you might have to have surgery. I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SURGERY, I DON'T NEED ANY EXERCISES, said Owen Meany. IF GOD GAVE ME THIS VOICE, HE HAD A REASON, Owen said.

Okay," I said. There are these moments when you see the course of your life unfolding, and you feel powerless to alter it.

GUYS," Owen Meany said. That spring, less than a month before Gravesend Academy's graduation exercises, the TV showed us a map of Thailand; five thousand U.S. Marines and fifty jet fighters were being

It was a deus-ex-machina world!

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

In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases. John Irving's The World According to Garp

He wanted to leave, but now it was his fate that held him. Sometimes, when we are labeled, when we are branded, our brand becomes our calling: Wilbur Larch felt himself called.

foreshadowing is the storytelling companion of fate.

What bothered Ruth was that she needed to be with Rooie again -- just to see, as in a story, what would happen next. That meant Rooie was in charge.

The only question that I wanted to ask the darkness was the one question Scrooge had also wanted an answer to: "'Are these the shadows of the things that Will be or are they shadows of the things that May be, only?'" But the Ghost of the Future was not answering.

Then he looked only at me. "YOU'RE GETTING SMALLER, BUT I CAN STILL SEE YOU!" said Owen Meany. Then

OH, PLANS, PLANS, PLANS—how we make plans into the future, as if the future will most certainly be there!

There are many unintentionally cruel talents that the world, indiscriminately, hands out to us. Whether we can use these gifts we never asked for is not the worlds concern.

Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.

We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen's weightlessness; they were the forces we didn't have the faith to feel, they were the forces we failed to believe in—and they were also lifting up Owen Meany, taking him out of our hands. O God—please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

In the World according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.

I know three things. I know that my voice doesn't change, and I know when I'm going to die. I wish I knew why my voice never changes, I wish I knew how I was going to die; but God has allowed me to know more than most people know—so I'm not complaining. The third thing I know is that I am God's instrument; I have faith that God will let me know what I'm supposed to do, and when I'm supposed to do it. Happy New Year!

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

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

A Prayer for Owen Meany

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

when you scare off the Angel of Death, the Divine Plan calls for the kind of angels you can't scare away;

there was an atmosphere of injustice that enveloped them both. Owen felt that God had assigned him a role that he was powerless to change; Owen's sense of his own destiny—his belief that he was on a mission—robbed him of his capacity for fun.

the first chair headed down the mountain would be Molly's last chairlift. Willy