The collection / 115 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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115 results · Page 1 of 5Play this collection ▷

01Undated

It´s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know. And that's hard, ..., because you often feel like interfering -you want to be the one who makes the plans.

John Irving / quote

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02Undated

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 / quote

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03Undated

My life is a reading list.

John Irving / quote

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04Undated

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.

John Irving / quote

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05Undated

It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change.

John Irving / quote

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06Undated

You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

John Irving / quote

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07Undated

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 / quote

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08Undated

In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases

John Irving / quote

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09Undated

Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.

John Irving / quote

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10Undated

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.

John Irving / quote

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11Undated

O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.

John Irving / quote

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12Undated

Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.

John Irving / quote

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13Undated

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy

John Irving / quote

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14Undated

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 / quote

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15Undated

When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost one, too,’’ they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)

John Irving / quote

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16Undated

Life," Garp wrote, "is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead an end occurs when those who are meant to peter out have petered out. All that is left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.

John Irving / quote

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17Undated

Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement,'" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives.

John Irving / quote

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18Undated

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.", Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton, 1988)

John Irving / quote

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19Undated

A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to pray. Just when I start to hear the prayer, everyone pops up to sing. And what does the stupid sermon have to do with God? Who knows what God thinks of current events? Who cares?

John Irving / quote

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20Undated

You can't learn everything you need to know legally.

John Irving / quote

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21Undated

The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you will believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.

John Irving / quote

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22Undated

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist ei

John Irving / quote

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23Undated

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 / quote

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24Undated

It’s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can’t interfere with people you love any more than you’re supposed to interfere with people you don’t even know. And that’s hard. Because you often feel like interfering—you want to be the one who makes the plans. . . You can’t protect people, kiddo, all you can do is love them.

John Irving / quote

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