Quotes from The Fourth Hand

John Irving ·  368 pages

Rating: (25.7K votes)


“Lemties neįmanoma įžvelgti, nebent jei sapnuoji ar esi apsvaigęs iš meilės.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand


“Aren’t eccentricities fairly common among overachievers.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand


“As for Dr. Zajac’s modest contribution to the ongoing pollution of the Charles River… well, let’s be fair… In his hopelessly old-fashioned opinion, a lot worse than dogshit was dumped into the Charles on daily basis.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand


“And feeling like a failed sexual predator, because of pregnant Mary…”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand


“Americans are suckers for an English accent.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand



“When they weren’t praying, they did what schoolgirls everywhere do. They laughed, they shrieked, they burst into hysterical sobs – all for no apparent reason…

The schoolgirls also played the worst Western music imaginable, and they took a surfeit of baths – so many baths that the traditional inn where Wallingford and Evelyn Arbuthnot stayed was repeatedly running out of hot water.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand


“There is often a defining experience that marks any significant change in the course of a person’s life.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand


“Was he nice? He didn’t know. He hoped he was, but how many of us truly know?”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand


About the author

John Irving
Born place: in Exeter, New Hampshire, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“The men who beat me were driven as much by fear as hate. They had lashed out blindly and left me for dead. Isaac had yet to feel that distinct version of violence, and because I was certain that soon enough he would, and that odds were when he did he wouldn’t survive, I didn’t bother to point out the difference. He offered me his hand as he bent down to kiss my forehead—a gesture that was intended to say that there was more between us now than just friendship. I gripped his hand just as tightly, and even lifted my head to his lips to make sure that he understood that I felt exactly the same way.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names


“Certi credono che la famiglia sia solo un fatto di DNA, ma non è così. Ha a che fare con le persone che ti amano, che rimangono al tuo fianco qualsiasi cosa accada. Conoscono i tuoi segreti e i tuoi difetti, e tu i loro, e ci si vuole bene comunque.”
― Kim Fielding, quote from Rattlesnake


“You want to talk about right and wrong, you go to Sunday school. This ain’t about right and wrong. Someone try to hurt you, sure they doin’ wrong. But when they attack you, they are sending energy your way. Strong energy. And that energy belongs to you. You have every right to use it for your own purposes.”
― J.D. Horn, quote from The Line


“There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains its maxims. It has no temple nor even a solitary column...However, out fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it. We are inclined to lay the chief stress on likeness and not on difference, and in foreign bodies we admit that there are many degrees of warmth below blood heat, but none of cold above it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Walden and other writings


“In the months that followed my mother's death, I managed to look like a normal person. I walked the street; I answered my phone; I brushed my teeth; most of the time. But I was not OK. I was in grief. Nothing seemed important. Daily tasks were exhausting. Dishes piled in the sink, knives crusted with strawberry jam. At one point I did not wash my hair for ten days. I felt that I had abruptly arrived at a terrible, insistent truth about the impermanence of everyday.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, quote from The Long Goodbye


Interesting books

Birthday Letters
(7.6K)
Birthday Letters
by Ted Hughes
Moby-Dick
(418.3K)
Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
(28.4K)
Evicted: Poverty and...
by Matthew Desmond
HCSB: Holman Christian Standard Bible
(2.2K)
Trump: The Art of the Deal
(11.6K)
Trump: The Art of th...
by Donald J. Trump
The Weaver of Odds
(28)
The Weaver of Odds
by Louise Blackwick

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters 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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.