Explore Quotes by John Irving

but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.

Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.

Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.

And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.

Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.

There's nothing as scary as the future.

Death, it seems," Garp wrote, "does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.

People regard art too highly, and history not enough

Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.

It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.

She was an expert at the art of sudden appearance.

You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.

Being wrong about important things is exhausting.

My brain is sending poison to my heart.

My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!

Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.

Grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying. When you’re no longer a child, and you no longer live at home, you don’t have to finish everything on your plate. One reward of leaving school is that you don’t have to finish books you don’t like.

It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy

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.