About John Irving: John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.
And what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence?
This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people—because, surely, Wally was nice—would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Clo...
For a terrible time of life a teen-ager deceives himself; he believes he can trick the world. He believes he is invulnerable. An adolescent who is an orphan at this phase is in danger of never growing up.
When an orphan is depressed," wrote Wilbur Larch, "he is attracted to telling lies. A lie is at least a vigorous enterprise, it keeps you on your toes by making you suddenly responsible for what happens because of it. You must be alert to lie, and st...
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?
Men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God
On his bedside table, between the reading lamp and the telephone, was his battered copy of David Copperfield. Homer didn't have to open the book to know how the story began. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that sta...
Here is the trap you are in.... And it's not my trap—I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has ...
It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need ... rules.
What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.
It´s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed to interfere with people you d...
At times, he admitted, he had been very happy in the apple business. He knew what Larch would have told him: that his happiness was not the point, or that it wasn't as important as his usefulness.
I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.’ (David Copperfield) “But all that night he lay awake because the phantoms of those days were not gone. Like the tiny, terrible ho...
He felt like hearing Mrs. Grogan’s prayer again, and so he went to the girls’ division a little early for his usual delivery of Jane Eyre. He eavesdropped in the hall on Mrs. Grogan’s prayer; he thought, then wondered if it would confuse the bo...
Once the state starts providing, it feels free to hand out the rules, too!" Larch blurted hastily. ..."In a better world..." she began patiently. "No, not in a better world!" he cried. "In this one--in this world. I take this world as a given. Talk t...
It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.
Keep passing the open windows.
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to...
And I find - I'm 63, and my capacity to be by myself and just spend time by myself hasn't diminished any. That's the necessary part of being a writer, you better like being alone.
I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.
