“We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Don't get your balls crossed about it.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“The one critisism the author of Slaugherhouse-Five would make of the young writer was what he called a punctuation problem. Mr. Vonnegut didn't like all the semicolons. 'People will probably figure out that you went to college -- you don't have to try to prove it to them,' he told Danny.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Moreover, there was what Amy called “the cocksuckers’ contingent of the country”—what Danny knew as the dumber-than-dog-shit element, those bully patriots—and they were too set in their ways or too poorly educated (or both) to see beyond the ceaseless flag-waving and nationalistic bluster.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Six-Pack didn't despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy's boy, and she agreed with Ketchum's assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the smallest crisis. If a fight broke out between two small dogs, for example, Ketchum claimed that Bush would call the fire department and ask them to bring a hose; then the president would position himself at a safe distance from the dogfight, and wait for the firemen to show up. The part Pam liked best about this assessment was that Ketchum said the president would instantly look self-important, and would appear to be actively involved--that is, once the firefighters and their hose arrived, and provided there was anything remaining of the mess the two dogs might have made of each other in the interim.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“I'll tell you what's wrong with dumb-shit patriotism--it's delusional! It signifies nothing but the American need to win”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“We've been an empire in decline since I can remember," Ketchum said bluntly; he wasn't kidding. "We are a lost nation, Danny. Stop farting around.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Amy Martin (ladysky) and Daniel Baciagalupo had a month to spend on Charlotte Turner's island in Georgian Bay; it was their wilderness way of getting to know each other before their life together in Toronto began. We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.
Little Joe was gone, but not a day passed in Daniel Baciagalupo's life when Joe wasn't loved or remembered. The cook had been murdered in his bed, but Dominic Baciagalupo had had the last laugh on the cowboy. Ketchum's left hand would lvie forever in Twisted River, and Six-Pack had known what to do with the rest of her old friend”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly-as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth-the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“As for the river, it just kept moving,as river do--as rivers do. Under the logs, the body of the young Canadian moved with the river, which jostled him to and fro--to and fro. If, at this moment in time Twisted River also appeared restless, even impatient, maybe the river itself wanted the boy's body to move on, too, move on, too.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“It was not necessarily what Ketchum might have said about the war in Iraq, or the never-ending mess in the Middle East, that particularly interested Danny or Six-Pack Pam. It was what Ketchum would have said about anything. It was the old logger's voice that Danny and Six-Pack wanted to hear.
Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“If you think you are capable of living without writing, do not write,”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“I still believe in you, as a writer, but the only stuff we ever had in common doesn't travel very far."
"What stuff is that?" he'd asked her.
"We're completely at ease being naked in front of strangers and total fuckheads", she'd told him. Maybe that's part of what being a writer entails, Danny Baciagalupo found himself thinking on that rainy spring night in Iowa city.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Rural life in the winter months was rugged: snow-blurred and alcohol-fueled, violent and fast.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“But the available light in Twisted River was dim and growing dimmer. The dance-hall door blew (or was slammed) closed, cutting off Teresa Brewer as suddenly as if Six-Pack had taken the singer’s slender throat in her hands. When the dance-hall door blew (or was kicked) open again, Tony Bennett was crooning “Rags to Riches.” Dominic didn’t for a moment doubt that the town’s eternal violence was partly spawned by irredeemable music.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves,”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Dear God!” the cook cried. “Soon all the wood on Twisted River will be pulpwood—for paper! What about toboggans is worse than paper?” “Books are made from paper!” Ketchum declared. “What role do toboggans play in your son’s education?”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“Did having a dog make you less political?”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
John Irving
Born place: in Exeter, New Hampshire, The United States
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“The world is made up of two classes - the hunters and the huntees.”
― Richard Connell, quote from The Most Dangerous Game
“..he made me understand something very important. Whether because I am a Latin, or because I am a neurotic, I have a need of gestures. I am myself expressive, demonstrative; every feeling I have takes on expression: words, gestures, signs, letters, articulateness or action. I need this in others.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
“God is not many. God is one. But many and divers are yet men's shadows. So long as men cast shadows on the earth, so long as each man's god no greater than hi shadow. The shadow-less only are all in the light. The shadow-less only know one god. For god is Light, and Light alone is able to know Light.”
― Mikhail Naimy, quote from The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which Was Once Called the Ark
“What is he collecting them for?”
― quote from Little Pilgrim's Progress: From John Bunyan's Classic
“You see, each country has a colour, a smell, and also a contagious sickness. In my country the sickness is complacency. In France it's arrogance, and in the United States it's ignorance."
"What about Rwanda?"
"Easy power and impunity. Here, there's total disorder. To someone who has a little money or powere, everything that seems forbidden elsewhere looks permissible and possible. All it takes is to dare it. Someone who's simply a liar in my country can be a fraud artist here, and the fraud artist gets to be a big-time thief. Chaos and most of all poverty give him powers he wouldn't have elsewhere.”
― Gil Courtemanche, quote from A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali
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