697 Quotes by John Irving

… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.

I was brought up in a community, in a family that valued such things as good manners, and I still do.

To her, ... celebrities at the party were not movie stars but the actual characters they'd played. Unfortunately, these movies had overlapped in her mind -- to the extent that she'd merged the plots of several different films into one incomprehensible epic. ...

We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.

Do you really want to go back to those times when orphanages existed and when many orphans were not adopted?

The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.

The inshore lifeboat was very busy with 39 jobs, and the all-weather lifeboat had 11.

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.

I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why? Because wrestling requires even more dedication than writing because wrestling represents the most difficult and rewarding objective that I have ever dedicated myself to; because wrestling and wrestling coaches are among the most disciplined and self-sacrificing people I have ever known.