Top John Irving Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

John Irving Biography

John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt Jr. on March 2, 1942) is an American novelist and screenwriter.

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John Irving Quotes

Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer. " “If you don’t believe in Easter,” Owen Meany said. “Don’t kid yourself—Don’t call yourself a Christian.

Believe, Christian, Easter, Event, Resurrection, Sentimental

It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need. . . rules.

Good Man, Man, Men, Needs, Right, Rules

And never forget, there is memory.

Forget, Memories, Memory, Never Forget

Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.

Childhood, Fancy, Grow, Grows, Leave

A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.

Motivation, Stronger, Injustice, Personal, Philanthropy

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

Death, Feeling, Grief, Loss, Particular, Stops

I try to see the whole woman,' Eddie said to Hannah. 'Of course I recognize that she's old, but there are photographs - or the equivalent of photographs in one's imagination of anyone's life. A whole life, I mean. I can picture her when she was much younger than I am - because there are always gestures and expressions that are ingrained, ageless. An old woman doesn't see herself as an old woman, and neither do I. I try to see her her whole life in her. There's something so moving about someone's whole life.

Moving, Mean, Expression, Woman, Said

Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.

Writing, Scary, Letdowns, Letdown, Writer

Here is the trap you are in. . . . And it's not my trap—I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.

Choices, Abortion, Matter, Violated, Abortions, Perform

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.

Down, Judging, Les, Say, Superiors, Tolerance

He was one of those people things came easily to, but he did little to demonstrate that he deserved to be gifted.

Came, Demonstrate, Gifted, Littles, People

All the unimaginative assholes in the world who imagine that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because it was impossible from what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford that such a man would have had the experience to imagine such things - well, this denies the very thing that separates Shakespeare from almost every other writer in the world: an imagination that is untouchable and nonstop.

Experience, Imagination, Know, Men, Shakespeare, World

It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

Best Friend, Good, Good Friend, Meany, Night, Philosophy

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.

Background, Freud, Novelists, Psychiatrists, Surfing, Umpires

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

Course, Courses, Interesting, Lie, Lying

Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven

Clothes, Heaven, Old, Old Clothes

When people say that German or any other language is romantic. . . all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language

Mean, Past, People, Say, Enjoyed

Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.

Care, Interested, Rumor, Stories, Story, True

wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

Glows, Reading, Sits, Tvs, Wherever

You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.

Happenings, Life, Live, Live Your Life, Overview, Stills

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