“…the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“You can't learn everything you need to know legally.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“…there is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old…”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“. . .There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments . . .”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“I try to see the whole woman,' Eddie said to Hannah. 'Of course I recognize that she's old, but there are photographs - or the equivalent of photographs in one's imagination of anyone's life. A whole life, I mean. I can picture her when she was much younger than I am - because there are always gestures and expressions that are ingrained, ageless. An old woman doesn't see herself as an old woman, and neither do I. I try to see her her whole life in her. There's something so moving about someone's whole life.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“The gardener had a dread of small women; he'd always imagined them to have an anger disproportionate to their size.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“An affection that was calculated was never trustworthy.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“She was convinced that women were as often victims of themselves as they were of men.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“That’s what I love about boys,” Marion told him. “No matter what, you just go about your business.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“…there was no better company for an especially personal revelation than the company of virtual strangers.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“Only the chicken-lover will understand me. He will give me a kindly look, maybe mildly desirous. His eyes will tell me: You might look a lot better with some reddish-brown feathers.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable) behavior of male writers; it would surely benefit me, as a writer, if I had the courage to seek out more of the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant myself. But women who seek out such things are made to feel ashamed, or else they sound stridently ridiculous in defending themselves -- as if they're bragging. ... Yet there are subjects that remain off-limits for women writers. It's not unlike that dichotomy which exists regarding one's sexual past: it is permissible, even attractive, for a man to have had one, but if a woman has had a sexual past, she'd better keep quiet about it.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“Most men don't mind if another woman watches. It's the women who are watching who don't want to be seen.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“Ruth thought of a novel as a great, untidy house, a disorderly mansion; her job was to make the place fit to live in, to give it at least the semblance of order. Only when she wrote was she unafraid.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“It was from just a few sentences that a writer learned anything from another writer.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“... the surprised bookseller, whose name (inexplicably) was Mendelssohn. He was no relation to the German composer, and this Mendelssohn either overliked his last name or disliked his first so much that he never revealed it. (When Ted had once asked him his first name, Mendelssohn had said only: "Not Felix.")”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story - not necessarily what did happen or what had happened.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“And maybe it was fair; if a book was any good, it was a slap in the face to someone.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“A novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more complicated than it seems at the beginning.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
“If you're a writer, the problem is that, when you try to call a halt to thinking about your novel-in-progress, your imagination still keeps going; you can't shut it off.”
― John Irving, quote from A Widow for One Year
John Irving
Born place: in Exeter, New Hampshire, The United States
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“every building is constructed stone by stone, and the same may be said of knowledge,”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from The World of Ice and Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones
“If you find something you truly love, stick with it. There's nothing else in this world that will make you half as happy. There's nothing else that will make you half as miserable, either, but you can't have one without the other.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Half-Off Ragnarok
“A Personal Atonement At some point the multitudinous sins of countless ages were heaped upon the Savior, but his submissiveness was much more than a cold response to the demands of justice. This was not a nameless, passionless atonement performed by some detached, stoic being. Rather, it was an offering driven by infinite love. This was a personalized, not a mass atonement. Somehow, it may be that the sins of every soul were individually (as well as cumulatively) accounted for, suffered for, and redeemed for, all with a love unknown to man. Christ tasted "death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9; emphasis added), perhaps meaning for each individual person. One reading of Isaiah suggests that Christ may have envisioned each of us as the atoning sacrifice took its toll—"when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed" (Isaiah 53:10; emphasis added; see also Mosiah 15:10–11). Just as the Savior blessed the "little children, one by one" (3 Nephi 17:21); just as the Nephites felt his wounds "one by one" (3 Nephi 11:15); just as he listens to our prayers one by one; so, perhaps, he suffered for us, one by one. President Heber J. Grant spoke of this individual focus: "Not only did Jesus come as a universal gift, He came as an individual offering with a personal message to each one of us. For each one of us He died on Calvary and His blood will conditionally save us. Not as nations, communities or groups, but as individuals."55 Similar feelings were shared by C. S. Lewis: "He [Christ] has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world."56 Elder Merrill J. Bateman spoke not only of the Atonement's infinite nature, but also of its intimate reach: "The Savior's atonement in the garden and on the cross is intimate as well as infinite. Infinite in that it spans the eternities. Intimate in that the Savior felt each person's pains, sufferings, and sicknesses."57 Since the Savior, as a God, has the capacity to simultaneously entertain multiple thoughts, perhaps it was not impossible for the mortal Jesus to contemplate each of our names and transgressions in concomitant fashion as the Atonement progressed, without ever sacrificing personal attention for any of us. His suffering need never lose its personal nature. While such suffering had both macro and micro dimensions, the Atonement was ultimately offered for each one of us.”
― Tad R. Callister, quote from The Infinite Atonement
“That’s how fear grows. When you keep it locked inside and never let it out, it starts to eat you alive.”
― Jason Segel, quote from Nightmares!
“Oh my god. I can’t believe I slapped him.
And I can’t help thinking Wow, I did it with my left hand, Marnie would be so proud.”
― Alyssa B. Sheinmel, quote from Faceless
A Beautiful Mind
The Gray Wolf Throne
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