John Irving: Trending quotes (page 4)

“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.”

“If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.”

“Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water… remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.”

“A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed.”

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

“The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.”

“Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.”

“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.”

“Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.”

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

“This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on.”

“You can't learn everything you need to know legally.”

“Being wrong about important things is exhausting.”

“…there is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old…”

“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.”

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

“…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.”

“I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you.”

“Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.”