I believe a novel should be as complicated and involved as you're capable of making it. — John Irving Copy Share Image
It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly. — John Irving Adults Copy Share Image
“it's not god who's fucked up, it's the screamers who say they believe in him and who claim to pursue their ends… — John Irving Christian-behavior Copy Share Image
“For seven of the eight years he was president, Reagan would not say the AIDS word.” — John Irving Copy Share Image
“If you're God's instrument, Owen," I said, "how come you need my help to stuff a basketball?” — John Irving God Copy Share Image
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties. — John Irving Books Copy Share Image
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior. — John Irving Behavior Copy Share Image
“Easter is the main even; if you don't believe in the resurrection, you're not a believer.” — John Irving Easter Copy Share Image
“God, I think I just hit a high E-flat - and I really held it!" Esmeralda said, after one of her more… — John Irving High notes Copy Share Image
“Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event;… — John Irving Christian 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
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
“It surprised him that she was the one who looked stricken with fear, as if she were a prisoner in the passenger… — John Irving Fear Copy Share Image
It seems to me that people who don’t learn as easily as others suffer from a kind of learning disability—there is something… — John Irving Ability Copy Share Image
“I met him in the language lab. In a lull between lab sections, I was editing tapes for freshman German when this… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found… — John Irving Books Copy Share Image
“When, if only for a moment, the novelist steps out of the creator's role, what roles are there for the novelist to… — John Irving Time Copy Share Image
“But the penultimate paragraph of the novel is naturally the passage I wrote first. “When we held Owen Meany above our heads,… — John Irving Books Copy Share Image
“REMEMBER WATAHANTOWET?” he asked me. “I remember,” I said. Then he smiled at the “penguin” who was trying to make him comfortable… — John Irving Copy Share Image
“while we waited to see what God would do. I heard a tear fall—it was one of my grandmother’s tears, and I… — John Irving Books Copy Share Image
