John Irving: Trending quotes (page 2)

“In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

“It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change.”

“When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what's it matter what they did to you?”

“The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.”

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

“Life is serious but art is fun!”

“If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.”

“…the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.”

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

“Logic is relative.”

“All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man.”

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

“Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?”

“Half my life is an act of revision.”

“I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.”

“All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.”

“Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.”

“If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital.”

“Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.”