697 Quotes by John Irving

I shared my grandmother’s distaste for the word rector – it sounded too much like rectum to be taken seriously.

If I had to be anything,” he told her, “I’d probably be a socialist, but I don’t want to be anything.

With women, Ernie Holm had some experience at taking no for an answer.

Do not forget the past; forgive the past.

Because I was a Wheelwright-and, therefore, a New England snob-I’d assumed that Phoenix was largely composed of Mormons and Baptists and Republicans;.

She felt if she ever had children she would love them no less when they were twenty than when they were two; they might need you more at twenty, she thought. What do you really need when you’re two? In the hospital, the babies were the easiest patients. The older they got, the more they needed; and the less anyone wanted or loved them.

You’re not like anyone else, Billy – that’s what’s the matter with you,” Donna said.

He was asleep – he was still dreaming – though his lips were moving. No one heard him; no one hears a writer who’s writing in his sleep.

In every life,” Dolores had said, “I think there’s always a moment when you must decide where you belong.