697 Quotes by John Irving

I’m not a movie person. They’re collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.

These Princes of Maine, these Kings of New England, these orphans of Saint Cloud’s – whoever they were, they were the heroes of their own lives. That much Homer could see in the darkness, that much Dr. Larch, like a father, gave him.

It seemed to Alice that the drunk should have been struck dead for using such language in a church, but before God could take any action against the down-and-out, William resumed playing – with a vengeance.

Don’t grown-ups ever get over things?

Once again, Jack reached for her hand. It was the only thing he knew how to do. As it would turn out, it was about the only thing he reall knew.

It’s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you can’t interfere with people you love anymore than you’re supposed to interfere with people you don’t even know.

The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.

God creates us out of love, but we don’t want God, or we don’t believe in Him, or we pay very poor attention to Him. Nevertheless, God continues to love us – at least, He continues to try to get our attention. Pastor Merrill made religion seem reasonable. And the trick of having faith, he said, was that it was necessary to believe in God without any great or even remotely reassuring evidence that we don’t inhabit a godless universe.

The World According to Bensenhaver,” the book jacket flap said, “is about a man who is so fearful of bad things happening to his loved ones that he creates an atmosphere of such tension that bad things are almost certain to occur. And they do.