Quote

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

John Irving

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Irving
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 2
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Exeter
New Hampshire
John Winslow Irving
Hand
Dark
Mother
Burns
Hands
Jack
Fingers
Mom
Hold
Needed

More quotes by John Irving

Image
I don’t have to say to you or anyone in our WRESTLING community that we are a small world unto ourselves and there is often a big difference in how much we love and understand each other and how little we’re understood or appreciated by people who spend their weekends watching basketball.
John Irving
Image
In this world,” Franny once observed, “just as you’re trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that that they have met you.
John Irving
Image
Among adults – and among orphans – Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
John Irving
Image
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
John Irving
Image
but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.
John Irving
Image
My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.
John Irving
Image
It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.
John Irving
Image
For most of my life, when I've finished the book I'm writing, there've always been as many as two or three other novels waiting to be written next. And the decision driving which one of them it should be was never based on how long it had waited or how many accumulated pages of notes I had.
John Irving
Image
Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.
John Irving
Image
You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.
John Irving
Image
The object of war is to survive it.
John Irving
Image
You think you have a memory but it has you!
John Irving
Image
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving
Image
I am not attracted to writers by style. What style do Dickens, Grass, and Vonnegut have in common? How silly! I am attracted to what makes them angry, what makes them passionate, what outrages them, what they applaud and find sympathetic in human beings and what they detest about human beings, too. They are writers of great emotional range.
John Irving
Image
You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.
John Irving
Image
In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?
John Irving
Image
Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer. (a train)
John Irving
Image
Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.
John Irving
Image
My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!
John Irving
Image
And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.
John Irving