“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“My life is a reading list.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“it's not god who's fucked up, it's the screamers who say they believe in him and who claim to pursue their ends in his holy name.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean––make sure they know what they mean!”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves--to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“I want to go on being a student," I told him. "I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader," I said.
"DON'T SOUND SO ASHAMED," he said. "READING IS A GIFT."
"I learned it from you," I told him.
"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT- IT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT. IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress- lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings. ”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“And in our Scripture class, Owen said, "IT'S TRUE THAT THE DISCIPLES ARE STUPID - THEY NEVER UNDERSTAND WHAT JESUS MEANS, THEY'RE A BUNCH OF BUNGLERS, THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD AS MUCH AS THEY WANT TO BELIEVE, AND THEY EVEN BETRAY JESUS. THE POINT IS, GOD DOESN'T LOVE US BECAUSE WE'RE SMART OR BECAUSE WE'RE GOOD. WE'RE STUPID AND WE'RE BAD AND GOD LOVES US ANYWAY - JESUS ALREADY TOLD THE DUMB-SHIT DISCIPLES WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. "THE SON OF MAN WILL BE DELIVERED INTO THE HANDS OF MEN, AND THEY WILL KILL HIM..." REMEMBER? THAT WAS IN MARK, RIGHT?"
"Yes, but let's not say "dumb-shit disciples" in class, Owen," Mr. Merrill said.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“when however small a measure of jealousy is mixed with misunderstanding, there is always going to be trouble.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“I have learned that the consequences of our past actions are always interesting; I have learned to view the present with a forward-looking eye.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL...THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOUR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“LAST NITE I HAD A DREAM. NOW I KNOW FOUR THINGS. I KNOW THAT MY VOICE DOESN’T CHANGE – BUT I STILL DON’T KNOW WHY. I KNOW THAT I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT. I KNOW WHEN I’M GOING TO DIE – AND NOW A DREAM HAS SHOWN ME HOW I’M GOING TO DIE. I’M GOING TO BE A HERO! I TRUST THAT GOD WILL HELP ME, BECAUSE WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO DO LOOKS VERY HARD.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving
Born place: in Exeter, New Hampshire, The United States
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“On the occasions that he did look up from the page, he would seem as though he were awakening from a dream.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Strange the Dreamer
“Rudel Correze is far from the first to seek to aid me in my passage to Rian. But I find myself still among the living, and I have discovered that I value this world for itself, not merely as a matter for someone's song. I love it for its heady wines and its battles, for the beauty of its women and their generosity and their pride, for the companionship of brave men and clever ones, the promise of spring in the depths of winter and the even surer promise that Rian and Corannos are waiting for us, whatever we may do. And I find now, your highness, long past the fires of my heart's youth and yours, that there is one thing I love more, even more than the music that remains my release from pain.'
'Love, de Talair? This is a word I did not expect to hear from you. I was told you foreswore it more than twenty years ago. The whole world was speaking of that. This much I am certain I remember. My information, so far distant in our cold north, seems to have been wrong in yet another matter. What is the one thing, then, my lord duke? What is it you still love?'
'Arbonne.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from A Song for Arbonne
“After Commencement Day, the world!" Joe said. "With Betsy.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy and Joe
“It has become a world of black and white, Matthew, a Manichean world where preachers encourage everyone to rush towards a conflict between good and evil. Each knowing, of course, that their own side is entirely in the right.”
― C.J. Sansom, quote from Revelation
“How must he prove himself? What was it they wished to know of him? And what did he know of himself here where loneliness was an unavoidable element of life, and a man must rely solely on himself?”
― Margaret Craven, quote from I Heard the Owl Call My Name
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The Queen's PoisonerBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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