“After twenty years in Canada, there are certain American lunatics who still fascinate me.” — John Irving Canada Copy Share Image
You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to… — John Irving Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind… — John Irving Copy Share Image
A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories. — John Irving Closeness Copy Share Image
Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we… — John Irving Choice Copy Share Image
“What she might have told him was that taxidermy, like sex, is a very personal subject; the manner in which we impose… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“It's Shakespearean, Bill; lots of the important stuff in Shakespeare happens offstage - you just hear about it.” — John Irving Shakespeare Copy Share Image
“We’re as common as rain.” And she was right: to each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of… — John Irving Family Copy Share Image
“Here was the world-famous novelist with her penchant for detail; yet, in her observations of a prostitute with a customer, she had… — John Irving Irony Copy Share Image
I don’t have to say to you or anyone in our WRESTLING community that we are a small world unto ourselves and… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Like many successful people he made good use of disappointments - responding to them with energy, with near-frenzied activity, rather than needing… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“At times, he admitted, he had been very happy in the apple business. He knew what Larch would have told him: that… — John Irving Business Copy Share Image
Patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president's particular agenda - and that to dispute a presidential policy is… — John Irving Agendas Copy Share Image
You don't want to be ungenerous toward people who give you prizes, but it is never the social or political message that… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“That was when I first began to think about certain events or specific things being "important" and having "special purpose." Until then,… — John Irving Believe in god Copy Share Image
Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my… — John Irving Ability Copy Share Image
It is an important distinction to note that she looked not only as if she had taken good care of herself, but… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I have no respect for the right-to-life position. But when you legislate personal belief, you're in violation of freedom of religion. The… — John Irving Abortion Copy Share Image
“A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass… — John Irving Catholic Copy Share Image
She felt detached from her family, and thought it strange how they had lavished so much attention on her, as a child,… — John Irving Affection Copy Share Image
He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved… — John Irving Abortion Copy Share Image
so my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail… — John Irving Copy Share Image
All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man. — John Irving Liars Copy Share Image
Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand.… — John Irving Copy Share Image
...every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent. — John Irving Education Copy Share Image
I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't… — John Irving Catholic Copy Share Image
“If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we… — John Irving Copy Share Image
. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . . — John Irving Copy Share Image
“It's rare when there's something we can do for ourselves which also pleases someone else.” — John Irving Copy Share Image
“You can't possibly know that you're going to be a writer!" Miss Frost said. "It's not a career choice.” — John Irving Copy Share Image
This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that… — John Irving Giving Copy Share Image
I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a… — John Irving Action Copy Share Image
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it. — John Irving Courage Copy Share Image
You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more… — John Irving Friends Copy Share Image
All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“What bothered Ruth was that she needed to be with Rooie again -- just to see, as in a story, what would… — John Irving Copy Share Image
Your memory is a monster; it summons with will of its own. You think you have a memory, but it has you. — John Irving Memories Copy Share Image
The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of. — John Irving Architecture Copy Share Image
