Quote

Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.

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
Conversation
Coins
Habit
Dropping
Deep
Wasted
Water
Stopping
Words
Pool
Untouchable
Rarely
Owen
Truth
Remain
Sank
Would
Bottom
Remarks
Like

More quotes by John Irving

Image
People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.
John Irving
Image
I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.
John Irving
Image
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.
John Irving
Image
You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I'm going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life
John Irving
Image
Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.
John Irving
Image
The excitement of anticipation was *almost* equal to the thrill of lovemaking.
John Irving
Image
No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.
John Irving
Image
The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.
John Irving
Image
It's my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support they want someone to say, Good job.
John Irving
Image
It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
John Irving
Image
I have always believed that, in a story, if something traumatic or calamitous enough happens to a kid at a formative age, that will make him or her the adult they become.
John Irving
Image
When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.
John Irving
Image
Thus we try to keep our heroes alive hence we remember them.
John Irving
Image
You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We - Americans - permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.
John Irving
Image
but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
John Irving
Image
Plot is a map and I begin with it. It is what made me admire the novels of the 19th century that the stories are foreshadowed. TheyÕre going someplace.
John Irving
Image
In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.
John Irving
Image
Human beings are remarkable - at what we can learn to live with. If we couldn't get strong from what we lose, and what we miss, and what we want and can't have, then we couldn't ever get strong enough, could we? What else makes us strong?
John Irving
Image
Keep passing the open windows.
John Irving
Image
Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.
John Irving