Frank > Frank's Quotes

“THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL...THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOUR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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 will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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, The Cider House Rules

“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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, My Movie Business: A Memoir

“It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“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, Until I Find You

“Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“…the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself.”
― John Irving, A Widow for One Year

“All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete.”
― John Irving, A Widow for One Year

“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.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“…there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time.”
― John Irving, A Widow for One Year

“I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings. ”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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, The Hotel New Hampshire

“The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Logic is relative.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.”
― John Irving, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

“He also knew that rivals are best unmanned by being ignored.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“…there is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old…”
― John Irving, A Widow for One Year

“When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.”
― John Irving, Until I Find You

“Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean––make sure they know what they mean!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

“I’m not afraid, but I’m very nervous.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“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, Until I Find You

“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, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Sorrow floats.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“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

“I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that; but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany