Quotes from book
A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving

A Prayer for Owen Meany is the seventh novel by American writer John Irving. Published in 1989, it tells the story of John Wheelwright and his best friend Owen Meany growing up together in a small New Hampshire town during the 1950s and 1960s. According to John's narration, Owen is a remarkable boy in many ways; he believes himself to be God's instrument and sets out to fulfill the fate he has prophesied for himself.

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“The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)

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“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)

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“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.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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“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.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving photo

“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.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving photo

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

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving photo

“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.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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“My life is a reading list.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving photo

“Logic is relative.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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“Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), ch. 9

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

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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“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.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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“(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving photo

“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.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

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