John Irving Zitate

„Das Leben ist leider nicht so gebaut wie ein guter, altmodischer Roman. Vielmehr endet es, wenn sich diejenigen, die sich erschöpfen sollen, erschöpft haben. Alles, was bleibt, ist die Erinnerung.“

The World According to Garp

„Aber das ist es nun mal, was wir tun: wir träumen weiter gegen den Strom und unsere Träume entschlüpfen uns fast so lebendig, wie wir sie heraufbeschwören können.“

The World According to Garp

„Fucking men.“

„Vielleicht muss es im Leben eines Schriftstellers diesen Augenblick geben, in dem ein anderer Schriftsteller beschuldigt wird, seinen Beruf verfehlt zu haben.“

The World According to Garp

„Dieser Hund war ein Killer, und das einzige, was ihn schützte, war eines der vielen durchsichtigen und widersinnigen Vorurteile, für die die amerikanische Oberschicht berühmt ist: nämlich dass die Kinder und Haustiere der Aristokratie gar nicht frei genug sein können und dass sie gar nicht imstande sind, jemandem weh zu tun. Dass es anderen Leuten verboten sein müsste, die Welt zu übervölkern oder ihre Hunde von der Leine zu lassen, dass aber die Hunde und Kinder der reichen Leute ein Recht darauf haben, frei herumzulaufen.“

The World According to Garp

„Irgend jemand sollte Mrs. Reagan sagen, dass keineswegs die jungen Leute - nicht einmal die Drogenkonsumenten unter ihnen - für die gewichtigsten Probleme, vor denen die Welt steht, verantwortlich sind!“

John Irving buch Owen Meany

A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving: Zitate auf Englisch

“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.”

“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)

“Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean—make sure they know what they mean!”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)

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

John Irving buch A Son of the Circus

Quelle: A Son of the Circus

““People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.””

John Irving buch The Hotel New Hampshire

Quelle: The Hotel New Hampshire

“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 buch The Cider House Rules

Variante: People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.”

John Irving buch Garp und wie er die Welt sah

Quelle: The World According to Garp

“What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.”

John Irving buch The Hotel New Hampshire

Quelle: The Hotel New Hampshire, ch. 11

“To each other, we were as normal and nice as the smell of bread, we were just a family. In a family even exaggerations make perfect sense.”

John Irving buch The Cider House Rules

Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.”

John Irving buch The Hotel New Hampshire

The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), ch. 6

“My life is a reading list.”

John Irving buch Garp und wie er die Welt sah

Quelle: The World According to Garp

“Keep passing the open windows.”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.”

John Irving buch The Hotel New Hampshire

Quelle: The Hotel New Hampshire

“Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”

John Irving buch Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

Quelle: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

“Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.”

John Irving buch The Cider House Rules

Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“In 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 buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), ch. 9

“Imagining something is better than remembering something.”

John Irving buch Until I Find You

Quelle: Until I Find You

“Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else's religion practiced on us.”

John Irving buch Garp und wie er die Welt sah

Quelle: The World According to Garp]] (1978)

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

Quelle: My Movie Business: A Memoir

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

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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 buch Garp und wie er die Welt sah

Quelle: The World According to Garp, ch. 19

“When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what's it matter what they did to you?”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“The desire to never leave your side, the desire to never see you again. The desire to see your face asleep on the pillow beside my face and to see your eyes open in the morning when I lie next to you—just watching you, waiting for you to wake up.”

John Irving buch The Cider House Rules

Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.”

John Irving buch Until I Find You

Quelle: Until I Find You

“Life is serious but art is fun!”

John Irving buch The Hotel New Hampshire

Quelle: The Hotel New Hampshire

“If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.”

“…the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“… and so he tried to accept the ache in his heart as what Dr. Larch would call the common symptoms of normal life.”

John Irving buch A Widow for One Year

Quelle: A Widow for One Year