Jill > Jill's Quotes

“It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.”
― William Ralph Inge

“People, generally, suck.”
― Christopher Moore, The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

“If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them.”
― Christopher Moore, Practical Demonkeeping

“Stephenie Meyer: Her vampires are sparkly, which I think we can all agree is wrong.”
― Christopher Moore

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“Keep passing the open windows.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“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

“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, The World According to Garp

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

“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

“My life is a reading list.”
― John Irving, 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, Until I Find You

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

“People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“it's not god who's fucked up, it's the screamers who say they believe in him and who claim to pursue their ends in his holy name.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Imagining something is better than remembering something.”
― John Irving, The World According to Garp

“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

“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

“Logic is relative.”
― John Irving, 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, A Son of the Circus

“We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“…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

“What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress- lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves--to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?”
― John Irving, My Movie Business: A Memoir