Quotes by John Irving

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

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

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

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

And what were the rules at St. Clouds? What were Larchs rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence?

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.

Just because youre sober, dont think youre a good driver, Cookie.

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

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

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

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 to me about this world! ...Oh, I cant always be right, Larch said tiredly.Yes, I know, Nurse Caroline said sympathetically. Its because even a good man cant always be right that we need a society, that we need certain rules--call them priorities, if you prefer, she said. ...Always in the background of his mind, there was a newborn baby crying... And they were not crying to be born, he knew; they were crying because they were born.

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.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casual

Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, arent they?

...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.

The object of war is to survive it.

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.

I grew up around books - my grandmothers 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.

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.

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