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
JOHN IRVINGNothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
More John Irving Quotes
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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 -
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING -
It doesn’t really matter who said it – it’s so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
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 -
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
So, I don’t work in terms of real time. I don’t work in a timely fashion.
JOHN IRVING -
The ability to see the future can be a burden, and the younger you are and the more isolated you feel, maybe the more of a burden it is.
JOHN IRVING -
Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else’s religion practiced on us.
JOHN IRVING -
I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.
JOHN IRVING -
…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.
JOHN IRVING -
How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
JOHN IRVING -
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING -
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING