697 Quotes by John Irving

Like any good novel, it lulled him into an almost tranquil state of awareness before it jolted him – it caught him completely by surprise.

I certainly think Obama is the most hopeful president I’ve seen in the country since John Kennedy.

It was Owen Meany who taught me that any good book is always in motion – from the general to the specific, from the particular to the whole, and back again. Good reading – and good writing about reading – moves the same way.

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either.

Don’t get your balls crossed about it.

Juan Diego lived there, in the past – reliving, in his imagination, the losses that had marked him.

You should listen to these people, Farrokh,” his father was telling him. “It isn’t necessary for them to be your moral equals in order for you to learn something from them.

The gardener had a dread of small women; he’d always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.

Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can’t turn you away.