01c. 1942 ADA terrorist, I think, is simply another kind of pornographer. The pornographer pretends he is disgusted by his work; the terrorist pretends he is uninterested in the means. The ends, they say, are what they care about. But they are both lying. Ernst loved his pornography; Ernst worshiped the means. It is never the ends that matter -- it is only the means that matter. The terrorist and the pornographer are in it for the means. The means is everything to them. The blast of the bomb, the elephant position, the Schlagobers and blood -- they love it all. Their intellectual detachment is a fraud; their indifference is feigned. They both tell lies about having ‘higher purposes.’ A terrorist is a pornographer.John Irving / quote ↗
02c. 1942 ADIf you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.John Irving / quote ↗
03c. 1942 ADThey were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.John Irving / quote ↗
04c. 1942 ADIn 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 / quote ↗
05c. 1942 ADSmall towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away.John Irving / quote ↗
06c. 1942 ADA novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more complicated than it seems at the beginning.John Irving / quote ↗
07c. 1942 ADOf course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.John Irving / quote ↗
08c. 1942 ADAnd maybe it was fair; if a book was any good, it was a slap in the face to someone.John Irving / quote ↗
09c. 1942 AD...nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.John Irving / quote ↗
11c. 1942 ADRuth knew very well what the killer thought he had heard: he'd heard the sound of someone trying not to make a sound - that's what he'd heard.John Irving / quote ↗
12c. 1942 ADUnlike Alice, Garp was a real writer —not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every artist should know: as Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.' Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions. Garp did not write faster than anyone else, or more; he simply always worked with the idea of completion in mind.John Irving / quote ↗
13c. 1942 ADNovels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn't much of a theory, but it was all Ruth could truly commit herself to at the moment. It was time to retire that old lecture, and her penance was to endure the compliments of her former credo.John Irving / quote ↗
14c. 1942 ADI'll bet every fucking one of your angels is going to be terrifying!John Irving / quote ↗
15c. 1942 ADI still believe in you, as a writer, but the only stuff we ever had in common doesn't travel very far.""What stuff is that?" he'd asked her."We're completely at ease being naked in front of strangers and total fuckheads", she'd told him. Maybe that's part of what being a writer entails, Danny Baciagalupo found himself thinking on that rainy spring night in Iowa city.John Irving / quote ↗
16c. 1942 ADAt times, he admitted, he had been very happy in the apple business. He knew what Larch would have told him: that his happiness was not the point, or that it wasn't as important as his usefulness.John Irving / quote ↗
17c. 1942 ADCrazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.John Irving / quote ↗
18c. 1942 ADJUST BECAUSE A BUNCH OF ATHEISTS ARE BETTER WRITERS THAN THE GUYS WHO WROTE THE BIBLE DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE THEM RIGHT!" [Owen Meany] said crossly. "LOOK AT THOSE WEIRDO TV MIRACLE-WORKERS--THEY'RE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC! BUT THE REAL MIRACLES AREN'T ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE--THEY'RE THINGS YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE WITHOUT SEEING. IF SOME PREACHER'S AN ASSHOLE, THAT'S NOT PROOF THAT GOD DOESN'T EXIST!John Irving / quote ↗
21c. 1942 ADGender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.John Irving / quote ↗
22c. 1942 ADAnd what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence?John Irving / quote ↗
23c. 1942 ADMoreover, there was what Amy called “the cocksuckers’ contingent of the country”—what Danny knew as the dumber-than-dog-shit element, those bully patriots—and they were too set in their ways or too poorly educated (or both) to see beyond the ceaseless flag-waving and nationalistic bluster.John Irving / quote ↗
24c. 1942 ADJust because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie.John Irving / quote ↗
