John Irving Zitate seite 3

„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

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

“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.”

John Irving In One Person

Quelle: In One Person

“If we live long enough, we become caricatures of ourselves.”

John Irving buch The Hotel New Hampshire

Quelle: The Hotel New Hampshire

“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 buch Last Night in Twisted River

Quelle: Last Night in Twisted River

“A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed.”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.”

John Irving buch Garp und wie er die Welt sah

Quelle: The World According to Garp

“The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.”

John Irving buch Garp und wie er die Welt sah

Quelle: The World According to Garp

“Self-hatred is worse than loneliness.”

“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 In One Person

Quelle: In One Person

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

John Irving In One Person

Quelle: In One Person

“This is a writer’s lesson:
To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.”

John Irving buch Last Night in Twisted River

Quelle: Last Night in Twisted River

“This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on.”

John Irving buch Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

Quelle: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

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

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Being wrong about important things is exhausting.”

John Irving buch A Widow for One Year

Quelle: A Widow for One Year (1998), part II, ch. 7

“…there is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old…”

John Irving buch The Cider House Rules

Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper – or in a hurry.”

John Irving buch A Widow for One Year

Quelle: A Widow for One Year

“It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.”

John Irving buch The Cider House Rules

Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you.”

John Irving buch The Cider House Rules

Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“Nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently.”

John Irving buch The Cider House Rules

Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it; it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

Quelle: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“If pride is a sin… moral pride is the greatest sin.”

John Irving buch Garp und wie er die Welt sah

Quelle: The World According to Garp

“You cannot drive with your eyes in the rear-view mirror… But dignity is difficult to maintain. Stamina requires constant upkeep. Repetition is boring. And you pay for grace.”

John Irving buch The Cider House Rules

Quelle: The Cider House Rules

“Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.”

John Irving buch Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

Quelle: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

“Whereas she wished more of the population were better educated, she also believed that education was largely wasted on the majority of the people she met.”

John Irving buch The Hotel New Hampshire

Quelle: The Hotel New Hampshire

“A reader told me recently, in London, said that 'well, I read that you write the last sentence first, so I always read your last sentence first.' And I said, 'oh, no, you're not supposed to do that.”

John Irving buch A Widow for One Year

Quelle: A Widow for One Year

“[On his process for writing novels:] I can't imagine what the first sentence is, I can't imagine where I want the reader to enter the story, if I don't know where the reader is going to leave the story. So once I know what the last thing the reader hears is, I can work my way backward, like following a roadmap in reverse.”

“The kind of people claiming to be in communication with God today … they are enough to drive a real Christian crazy!”

A modern novelist of Dickensian tradition, Spotlight, Russia Today, January 24, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ost0Gyl2V1I,

“He wrote Helen that "a part of adolescence is feeling that there's no one else around you who's enough like yourself to understand you."”

John Irving buch Owen Meany

A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)