"And the thing about love," Wally said to Angel, "is that you can’t force anyone. It’s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what … - John Irving

"And the thing about love," Wally said to Angel, "is that you can’t force anyone. 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 interfere with people you don’t even know. And that’s hard,” he added, “because you often feel like interfering - you want to be the one who makes the plans.

“It’s hard to want to protect someone else, and not be able to,” Angel pointed out.

“You can’t protect people, kiddo,” Wally said. “All you can do is love them."

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About John Irving

John Winslow Irving (born 2 March 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (for The Cider House Rules, based on his novel of the same name).

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: John Wallace Blunt
Alternative Names: John Winslow Irving John Wallace Blunt, Jr.

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Additional quotes by John Irving

When we held Owen Meany above our heads, when we passed him back and forth - so effortlessly - we believed that Owen weighed nothing at all. We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know that they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen's weightlessness; they were the forces we didn't have the faith to feel, they were the forces we failed to believe in - and they were also lifting up Owen Meany, taking him out of our hands. O God - please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

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People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.

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