If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves. — John Irving Caricatures Copy Share Image
Garp drank the beer and wondered if everything was an anticlimax.. — John Irving Beer Copy Share Image
When I love a novel I've read, I want to reread it - in part, to see how it was constructed. — John Irving Books Copy Share Image
“I TRUST THAT GOD WILL HELP ME, BECAUSE WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO DO LOOKS VERY HARD.” — John Irving Faith Copy Share Image
“I'll tell you what's wrong with dumb-shit patriotism--it's delusional! It signifies nothing but the American need to win” — John Irving Copy Share Image
“Like any good novel, it lulled him into an almost tranquil state of awareness before it jolted him - it caught him… — John Irving Books Copy Share Image
“people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.” — John Irving Child Copy Share Image
There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. — John Irving Asleep Copy Share Image
She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all. — John Irving Heart Copy Share Image
I believe that, in any novel of mine, the principal objective is the construction of the whole. — John Irving Copy Share Image
Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“The one critisism the author of Slaugherhouse-Five would make of the young writer was what he called a punctuation problem. Mr. Vonnegut… — John Irving Books Copy Share Image
I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age,… — John Irving Adults Copy Share Image
“When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost one, too,’’ they told me.… — John Irving Children Copy Share Image
If I have any advantage, maybe, as a writer, it is that I don't think I'm very interesting. I mean, beginning a… — John Irving Advantage Copy Share Image
There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long… — John Irving Copy Share Image
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal,’”… — John Irving Courage Copy Share Image
Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela's empty office. Homer knew better than… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“...but I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar -- you live next… — John Irving Small towns Copy Share Image
“Homer Wells was in Wally’s room, reading David Copperfield and thinking about Heaven – ‘…that sky above me, where, in the mystery… — John Irving Heaven Copy Share Image
“Mother's intentions were always sound, never muddy; I don't imagine that she troubled herself to feel very guilty. But the Rev. Mr.… — John Irving Brooding Copy Share Image
“will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession… — John Irving Death Copy Share Image
“When he and Wally stopped laughing, Homer said, ‘I’ve never seen the ocean, you know.’ ‘Candy, did you hear that?’ Wally asked,… — John Irving Humor Copy Share Image
“The Winkles were in the business of manufacturing sensations for people who were so removed from any sensations of their own making… — John Irving Business Copy Share Image
