John Irving: Trending quotes (page 3)

“Sorrow floats.”

“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.”

“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.”

“How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.”

“when however small a measure of jealousy is mixed with misunderstanding, there is always going to be trouble.”

“Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.”

“…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.”

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

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

“Good habits are worth being fanatical about.”

“O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.”

“I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.”

“We are formed by what we desire”

“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.”

“It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.”

“It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.”

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

“When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.”

“If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?”