We permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it – and reward it in all manner of ways.
JOHN IRVINGIt is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.
More John Irving Quotes
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No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
JOHN IRVING -
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
JOHN IRVING -
But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.
JOHN IRVING -
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 -
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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There’s nothing as scary as the future.
JOHN IRVING -
Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.
JOHN IRVING -
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
JOHN IRVING -
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don’t have one. But we are a country – USA – that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.
JOHN IRVING -
YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.
JOHN IRVING -
I suppose I’m proudest of my novels for what’s imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.
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 -
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
JOHN IRVING -
I always thought that you could do worse than find yourself dying in the company of a devoted former student.
JOHN IRVING -
Life is an X-rated soap opera.
JOHN IRVING