“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
―
John Irving,
A Prayer for Owen Meany
“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.” ― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.” ― John Irving, The Cider House Rules
“They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.” ― John Irving, The World According to Garp
“Keep passing the open windows.” ― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
“My life is a reading list.” ― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.” ― John Irving, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
“It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.” ― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
“In this dirty minded world, you are either someone's wife or someone's whore. And if you're not either people think there is something wrong with you....but there is nothing wrong with me” ― John Irving, The World According to Garp
“Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.” ― John Irving, The Cider House Rules
“Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual.” ― John Irving, 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, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.” ― John Irving, The Cider House Rules
“Imagining something is better than remembering something.” ― John Irving, The World According to Garp
“In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.” ― John Irving, Until I Find You
“So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother and someone’s older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them… That’s what happens, like it or not. And because that’s what happens, this is what we need: we need a good, smart bear… Coach Bob knew it all along: you’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows.” ― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.” ― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.” ― John Irving, The Cider House Rules
“They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.” ― John Irving, The World According to Garp
“Keep passing the open windows.” ― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
“My life is a reading list.” ― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.” ― John Irving, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
“It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.” ― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
“In this dirty minded world, you are either someone's wife or someone's whore. And if you're not either people think there is something wrong with you....but there is nothing wrong with me” ― John Irving, The World According to Garp
“Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.” ― John Irving, The Cider House Rules
“Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual.” ― John Irving, 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, A Prayer for Owen Meany
“People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.” ― John Irving, The Cider House Rules
“Imagining something is better than remembering something.” ― John Irving, The World According to Garp
“In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.” ― John Irving, Until I Find You
“So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother and someone’s older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them… That’s what happens, like it or not. And because that’s what happens, this is what we need: we need a good, smart bear… Coach Bob knew it all along: you’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows.” ― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany
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