John Irving Quotes

All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone, let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down.

~ John Irving

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.

~ John Irving

JUST BECAUSE A BUNCH OF ATHEISTS ARE BETTER WRITERS THAN THE GUYS WHO WROTE THE BIBLE DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE THEM RIGHT! [Owen Meany] said crossly. LOOK AT THOSE WEIRDO TV MIRACLE-WORKERS--THEY'RE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC! BUT THE REAL MIRACLES AREN'T ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE--THEY'RE THINGS YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE WITHOUT SEEING. IF SOME PREACHER'S AN ASSHOLE, THAT'S NOT PROOF THAT GOD DOESN'T EXIST!

~ John Irving

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

~ John Irving

...where our desires come from; that is a dark, winding road.

~ John Irving

Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.

~ John Irving

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?

~ John Irving

Moreover, there was what Amy called “the cocksuckers’ contingent of the country”—what Danny knew as the dumber-than-dog-shit element, those bully patriots—and they were too set in their ways or too poorly educated (or both) to see beyond the ceaseless flag-waving and nationalistic bluster.

~ John Irving

(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

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

~ John Irving

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

~ John Irving

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

~ John Irving

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.

~ John Irving

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

~ John Irving

As for Jenny, she felt only that women - just like men - should at least be able to make conscious decisions about the course of their lives; if that made her a feminist, she said, then she guessed she was one.

~ John Irving

Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?

~ John Irving

...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.

~ John Irving

She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story - not necessarily what did happen or what had happened.

~ John Irving

I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around.

~ John Irving

To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread. We were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.

~ John Irving

The building of the architecture of a novel - the craft of it - is something I never tire of.

~ John Irving

With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. You spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.

~ John Irving

I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously, in fact. Therefore, I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.

~ John Irving

It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.

~ John Irving

I suppose I'm proudest of my novels for what's imagined in them. I think the world of my imagination is a richer and more interesting place than my personal biography.

~ John Irving

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.

~ John Irving

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.

~ John Irving