John Irving
John Irving
John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 March 1942
CountryUnited States of America
moral-lessons lessons moral
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
thinking cookies sober
Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.
water stopping coins
Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.
behavior ruthless humans
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
mind
No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.
baseball games waiting
(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action
ambition childhood want
Ambition robs you of your childhood. The moment you want to become an adult—in any way—something in your childhood dies.
suicide sorry crazy
Lilly was not crazy. She left a serious suicide note. 'Sorry,' said the note. 'Just not big enough.
mother dream brother
So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother and someone’s older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them.
rumor care stories
Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.
people littles gifted
He was one of those people things came easily to, but he did little to demonstrate that he deserved to be gifted.
remember said let-me
YOU LET ME DROWN!” Owen said. “YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! YOU JUST WATCHED ME DROWN! I’M ALREADY DEAD!” he told us. “REMEMBER THAT: YOU LET ME DIE.
pride moral sin
If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin.
baby jesus parent
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.