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

John Irving

We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVING

Country Rewards Way
You can’t learn everything you need to know legally.
JOHN IRVING

Feet Knows Needs
It’s a no-win argument – that business of what we’re born with and what our environment does to us. And it’s a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
JOHN IRVING

Environment Growth Winning
If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING

Moral Pride Sin
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
JOHN IRVING

Friend Good Meany Owen Supportive
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn’t terribly painful.
JOHN IRVING

Sunday Teenage Years
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

Memorable Thinking Trying
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING

Asking Giving Please
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING

Nervous Not Afraid People
I don’t begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.
JOHN IRVING

Finals Knowing Usually Voice
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
He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.
JOHN IRVING

Coincidence Novel Young
Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
JOHN IRVING

Bears Practice Promise
Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
JOHN IRVING

Hatred Loneliness Self
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother’s hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
JOHN IRVING

Dark Mom Mother
A part of adolescence is feelimg that there’s no one else around who’s enough like youself to understand you.
JOHN IRVING

Adolescence Enough Like

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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