Explore Quotes by John Irving

But I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.

Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.

And Father said, “There are no happy endings.” “Right!” cried Iowa Bob – an odd mixture of exuberance and stoicism in his cracked voice. “Death is horrible, final, and frequently premature,” Coach Bob declared. “So what?” my father said. “Right!” cried Iowa Bob. “That’s the point: So what?” Thus the family maxim was that an unhappy ending did not undermine a rich and energetic life. This was based on the belief that there were no happy endings.

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.

I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.

I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.

Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.

The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.

He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.

Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)

As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper – or in a hurry.

The former stewardess glared at her ex-pilot husband as if he had been speaking, and thinking, in the absence of sufficient oxygen.

You cannot drive with your eyes in the rear-view mirror… But dignity is difficult to maintain. Stamina requires constant upkeep. Repetition is boring. And you pay for grace.

We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.

This is a writer’s lesson: To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.

We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest,” Mrs. Grogan was saying, “and peace at last.” Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.

… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign; it is at least a form of being human.

Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.