John Irving

“You don't sound very well Owen." I pointed out to him. "IF JESUS HAD TO BE BORN ON A DAY LIKE THIS. I DON'T THINK HE'D HAVE LASTED LONG ENOUGH TO BE CRUCIFIED." Owen said.”

“Nuviliame tik patys save. Turėtume pasistengti kuo labiau sumažinti visą tą atsakomybę, kurią jaučiamės esą skolingi kitiems.”

“Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee?""He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,'" I explained.Dan got out the dictionary , then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing at himself saying, "That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous!" And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was--a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die.”

“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.”

“That was when I first began to think about certain events or specific things being "important" and having "special purpose." Until then, the notion that anything had a designated, much less a special purpose would have been cuckoo to me. I was not what was commonly called a believer then, and I am a believer now; I believe in God, and I believe in the "special purpose" of certain events or specific things.”

“...but 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. My cousins were both small-towners and outsiders; they had not grown up with Own Meany, who was so strange to them that he inspired awe - yet they were no more likely to fall upon him, or to devise ways to torture him, than it was likely for a herd of cattle to attack a cat.”

“If (a writer) has applied himself to an art for 15 or 20 years and they’ve gotten good at it, and they’re expected to do something else to support themselves while the industry that sells this craft supports itself very well, something is badly wrong. Morally wrong.”

“People regard art too highly, and history not enough”

“There’s nothing I need or want to know from the writers I admire that isn’t in their books. It’s better to read a good writer than meet one.”

“You Got To Get Obsessed and Stay Obsessed.”

“By '95 - in New York, alone - more Americans had died of AIDS than were killed in Vietnam.”

“Grown-ups shouldn’t finish books they’re not enjoying. When you’re no longer a child, and you no longer live at home, you don’t have to finish everything on your plate. One reward of leaving school is that you don’t have to finish books you don’t like.”

“Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.”

“It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.”

“Love was certainly not safe - not ever.”

“Did anyone who was in love and was unsatisfied with how he was loved in return ever feel saved?”

“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.”

“It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.”

“A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy”

“Buster was queer as a cat fart.”

“When I first came to Canada, I thought it was going to be easy to be a Canadian; like so many stupid Americans, I pictured Canada as simply some northern, colder, possibly more provincial region of the United States-I imagined it would be like moving to Maine, or Minnesota.”

“The kind of people claiming to be incommunication with God today . . . they are enough to drive a real Christian crazy! And how about these evangelical types, performing miracles for money? Oh, there's big bucks in interpreting the gospel for idiots-or in having idiots interpret the gospel for you”

“The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law-they disgrace democracy by claiming that what they do they do for democracy! They should be in jail. They should be in Hollywood!”

“Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer."“If you don’t believe in Easter,” Owen Meany said. “Don’t kid yourself—Don’t call yourself a Christian.”

“She drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch – it was infinitely more beneficial to the soul, and to the intelligence, to read or to listen – and what she imagined there was on TV appalled her.”

“No touching Baby Jesus.”“But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation.“Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.”

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

“(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action”

“You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.”

“It seemed to Dr. Daruwalla that his story was the opposite of universal; his story was simply strange - the doctor himself was singularly foreign.”

“Like any good novel, it lulled him into an almost tranquil state of awareness before it jolted him - it caught him completely by surprise.”

“The two old secretaries conversed in the manner of hostile but toothless male dogs.”

“No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.”

“Hang in there, Frank!' Freud called - to the entire lobby. 'Don't let anyone tell you you're queer! You're a prince, Frank!' Freud cried. 'You're better than Rudolf!' Freud yelled to Frank. 'You're more majestic than all the Hapsburgs, Frank!' Freud encouraged him. Frank couldn't speak, he was crying so hard.”

“Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note.'Sorry,' said the note.'Just not big enough.”

“It was quality that killed Lilly; it was the end of The Great Gatsby, which was not her ending, which was not an ending within her grasp.”

“Some producer actually told Franny that profanity revealed a poor vocabulary and a lack of imagination. And Frank and Lilly and Father and I all loved to shout at Franny, then, and ask her what she had said to that. 'What an anal crock of shit, you dumb asshole!' she'd told the producer. 'Up yours - and in your ear, too!”

“We aren't eccentric, we're not bizarre. To each other, we're as normal and nice as the smell of bread, we were just a family. In a family, even exaggerations make perfect sense; they are always logical exaggerations, nothing more.”

“We are formed by what we desire”

“If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.”

“Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.”

“Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement,'" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives.”

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

“I'll tell you what's wrong with dumb-shit patriotism--it's delusional! It signifies nothing but the American need to win”

“The lie, of course, is more interesting.”

“Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.”

“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.”

“It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.”

“He was one of those people things came easily to, but he did little to demonstrate that he deserved to be gifted.”

“. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .”