Explore Quotes by John Irving

A sentence boiled in her, but she could not yet see it clearly.

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.

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

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

Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century; that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.

The object of war is to survive it.

Ever since the Christmas of 1953, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving-Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.

Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.

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

But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.

I don’t have to say to you or anyone in our WRESTLING community that we are a small world unto ourselves and there is often a big difference in how much we love and understand each other and how little we’re understood or appreciated by people who spend their weekends watching basketball.

Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean - make sure they know what they mean!

Be serious. Life hurts. Reflect what hurts. I don't mean that you can't also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what you lose.

My life as a writer consists of 1/8 talent and 7/8 discipline.

A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.

It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support; they want someone to say, "Good job."

A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.

I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why? Because wrestling requires even more dedication than writing because wrestling represents the most difficult and rewarding objective that I have ever dedicated myself to; because wrestling and wrestling coaches are among the most disciplined and self-sacrificing people I have ever known.

Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

In our hearts... there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they’re foreigners - even in their native lands. In our hearts... there also abides a certain suspicion that such people need to feel set apart from their society. But people who initiate loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nor are they undeserving of our pity.