John Irving Quotes

Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors.

The Winkles appeared to greet the morning vigorously. Although Homer had never heard human beings make love, or moose mate, he knew perfectly well that the Winkles were mating. If Dr. Larch had been present, he might have drawn new conclusions concerning the Winkles' inability to produce offspring. He would have concluded that the violent athleticism of their coupling simply destroyed, or scared to death, every available egg and sperm.

he smoked so much marijuana that his hair smelled like a cupboard crammed with oregano;

…the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.

Someone who hasn't read a novel doesn't really know what it's about, William.

...the single ingredient in American literature that distinguishes it from other literatures of the world is a kind of giddy, illogical hopefulness. It is quite technically sophisticated while remaining ideologically naïve.

...I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace.

That’s what I love about boys,” Marion told him. “No matter what, you just go about your business.

...there's a limit to enduring admiration being a substitute for love.

"so my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her rose garden she did not want to appear underdressed. if the dresses got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. when my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, "what? and have those people at the cleaners what i was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?"

from my grandmother i learned that logic is relative."

but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

Casey recalled how Gail defended herself in the parking lot of the English & Philosophy Building from the unwanted attentions of a lecherous fellow student, who shall remain nameless. ‘Please leave me alone,’ Ms Godwin warned the offending student, ‘or I shall be forced to wound you with a weapon you can ill afford to be wounded by in a town this small.’ The threat was most mysterious, not to mention writerly, but the oafish lecher was not easily deterred. ‘And what might that weapon be, little lady?’ the lout allegedly asked. ‘Gossip,’ Gail Godwin replied.

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