John Irving Quotes, Photos, and Miscellanea

Homer Wells, twenty-one, breathing in the steam from the hot tea, sat waiting for his life to begin.

"Here in St. Cloud's," he wrote, to himself, "it is imperative to have good obstetrical procedure, and to be able to perform a dilatation and curettage. In other parts of the world, they learn how to drive and swim!"

"I'm not saying it's right, you understand? I'm saying it's her choice- it's a woman's choice. She's got to have a choice you understand?" Larch asked.

"Adolescence, " wrote Wilbur Larch. "Is it the first time in life we discover that we have something terrible to hide from those who love us?"

Of the fall, Dr. Larch wrote: "In other parts of the world, fall is for the harvest; one gathers the fruits of spring and summer's labors. These fruits provide for the long slumber and the season of ungrowin that is called winter. But here in St. Cloud's, the fall is only five minutes long."

I just love it when certain people feel free to tell writers what the correct words are. When I hear the same people use impact as a verb, I want to throw up!

You shouldn't guess about someone's past; if you don't see any evidence of it, a person's past remains unknown to you.

"The problems between the Montagues and the Capulets were not Romeo's and Juliet's problems," Miss Frost said. "Romeo and Juliet were the right people for each other; it was their families that were fucked up."

In reading, as in writing, all one needed- that is, in order to have an utterly absorbing journey- was a believable but formidable relationship. What else, after all, did crushes- especially crushes on the wrong people- lead to?

"But there are no 'wrong' people to have crushes on, Bill," Richard assured me. "You cannot will yourself to have, or not to have, a crush on someone."

Oh, the winds of change; they do not blow gently into the small towns of northern New England.

The sheer sloppiness of human relationships appalled him, especially those relationships to which he's brought a special responsibility and care. Brother-sister, brother-brother, child-parent, parent-child. What was the matter with human beings, that they made such a shambles out of these basic relationships?

A universal code of defecation applies: if some people are shitting somewhere, others will shit there, too.