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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

Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.
JOHN IRVING

Doe Memories Monsters
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
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
JOHN IRVING

Anticipation Excitement Thrill
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
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean – make sure they know what they mean!
JOHN IRVING

Mean People Religious
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
In the world according to her father, Jenny Garp knew, we must have energy. Her famous grandmother, Jenny Fields, once thought of us as Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners. But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.
JOHN IRVING

Energy Father Grandmother
This is what self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.
JOHN IRVING

Centered Religion Self
He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
JOHN IRVING

Optimism Quality Risk
All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let’s just leave them be. Don’t judge them. You are not superior to them – don’t put them down.
JOHN IRVING

Judging Superiors Tolerance
If pride is a sin … moral pride is the greatest sin.
JOHN IRVING

Moral Pride Sin
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
JOHN IRVING

Nervous Not Afraid People
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING

Life Opera Soap
And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won’t forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
JOHN IRVING

Book Memories Tears
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
I never know when I finish the novel I am writing which will be the next novel out of the station.
JOHN IRVING

Next Novel Writing

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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