black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.

John Irving

It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don’t expect me to change.
JOHN IRVING

Faults Meany Owen Responsibility
Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
JOHN IRVING

Decision Finals Unnecessarily
What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
JOHN IRVING

Love People Wind
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
JOHN IRVING

Creative Maps Writing
…I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next door to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace.
JOHN IRVING

Doors Growing Long
They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
JOHN IRVING

Awkward Procedures Regret
The powerful wind swept his hair away from his face; he leaned his chest into the wind, as if he stood on the deck of a ship heading into the wind, slicing through the waves of an ocean he’d not yet seen.
JOHN IRVING

Hair Ocean Powerful
You’re nice,’ Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. ‘And you’re my oldest friend.’ But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
JOHN IRVING

Hands Nice Squeezing
Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.
JOHN IRVING

Die Dies Everybody
Wrestling was my first success, the first thing that confirmed that I could be good at anything. Devoting yourself to wrestling, or tennis, or skiing, or dance, or to a musical instrument is a longing to be disciplined for a purpose.
JOHN IRVING

Musical Tennis Wrestling
What a phrase that is: ‘that explains everything!’ I know better than to think anything ‘explains everything’ today.
JOHN IRVING

Phrases Thinking Today
If you asked me one day, I might say, “Well, sometimes I feel a little bit religious.” If you asked me another day, I’d just say flat out, “No.”
JOHN IRVING

Another Day Religious
Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents’ own rule.
JOHN IRVING

Children Moments Parent
I’m not a movie person. They’re collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.
JOHN IRVING

Collaboration Compromise Heart
No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin – only four years older than I am – everything, or what little I could discover about him.
JOHN IRVING

Cousin Father Years
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
JOHN IRVING

Condescend Inferiors People

In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More John Irving Quotes