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
falling-in-love fall love-is
But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.
writing letdowns seems
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.
loneliness comforting combat
Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.
optimism risk quality
He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
night journey gone
I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.’ (David Copperfield) “But all that night he lay awake because the phantoms of those days were not gone. Like the tiny, terrible holes in the prophylactics, the phantoms of those days were not easy to detect—and their meaning was unknown—but they were there.
giving asking please
O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.
memories nihilist ends
Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.
trouble misunderstanding
when however small a measure of jealousy is mixed with misunderstanding, there is always going to be trouble.
book reading school
In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?
moral-lessons lessons moral
He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson
being-human form humans
… but only because exhaustion is a life-sign; it is at least a form of being human.
heart normal drs
… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.
mind
We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.
eye mirrors views
You cannot drive with your eyes in the rear-view mirror… But dignity is difficult to maintain. Stamina requires constant upkeep. Repetition is boring. And you pay for grace.