A collection of quotes and sayings by John Irving on protagonist, crossword, author, garp, wedding, reading, best-books, learning, writing, people, hate, venice and mind
100 Mind-Blowing Quotes By John Irving On Life, Love, Courage, Talent And More
John Irving is a famous American screenwriter and novelist. In 1978, after the international success of ‘The World According To Garp’, Irving achieved huge critical acclaim. Some of his bestselling novels include, ‘A Widow For One Year’, ‘The Cider House Rules’, ‘A Prayer For Owen Meany’, ‘Until I find You’, ‘Last Night In Twisted River’ and ‘The Hotel New Hampshire’ amongst various others. In 1999, he bagged in an ‘Academy Award’ for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’. Some of his novels have also been adapted into movies. A number of his short-stories and books have been set around and in the ‘Phillips Exeter Academy’. Zoom through the inspiring quotes and sayings by John Irving which holds a world of wisdom. Following is a compilation of some famous quotable quotes and thoughts by John Irving on learn, legal, habits, mind, school, time, belong, simple, know, simple, obsessed, perfect, imagination, architecture, consequences, sympathy, believe, responsibility etc.
In this dirty minded world, you are either someone's wife or someone's whore. And if you're not either people think there is something wrong with you....but there is nothing wrong with me
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
John Irving
People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
John Irving
Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.
John Irving
Imagining something is better than remembering something.
John Irving
It's not god who's fucked up, it's the screamers who say they believe in him and who claim to pursue their ends in his holy name.
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?
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.
You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life
The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.
John Irving
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.
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
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
John Irving
Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.
John Irving
In this dirty minded world, you are either someone's wife or someone's whore.
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.
John Irving
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.
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.
John Irving
If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.
John Irving
This is a writer’s lesson:
To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.
John Irving
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.
…there is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old…
John Irving
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.
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.
John Irving
You cannot drive with your eyes in the rear-view mirror… But dignity is difficult to maintain. Stamina requires constant upkeep. Repetition is boring. And you pay for grace.
In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.
John Irving
Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.
John Irving
The lie, of course, is more interesting.
John Irving
I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that; but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.
He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
John Irving
But writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
John Irving
Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.
John Irving
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.
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
 is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action )
