697 Quotes by John Irving

[...]every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance toward the innocent

You can't possibly know that you're going to be a writer!" Miss Frost said. "It's not a career choice.

When you lie, it makes you feel in charge of your life. Telling lies is very seductive to orphans. I know because I tell them, too. I love to lie. When you lie, you feel as if you have cheated fate - your own, and everybody else's.

wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.

As Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.' Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions.

If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.

How I live matters more than what I do. I have ambitions for the quality of how I live. I have no ambition for making money ...and I'd have time to read enough to be a constant source of information, ideas and language.

Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.

Because who can describe the look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death?