John Irving Quotes

The morning brought with it, if not a brighter outlook, at least a measure of control, some acceptance. Instinctively, I knew that the new tear in my heart would always ache. That was just going to be a part of me now.

You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop.

My heart's been torn wide open, just like I feared it would be, and I have no willpower to close it back up.

Unfortunately, I can’t run from my heart. It hurts, deep inside my body. And I know I’ll never be the same.

You fight so hard, so long, to cut someone out of your heart, but it’s not always your heart that betrays you.

Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can’t fight your way out of as easily.

This is how your heart gets snagged, like a balloon on a barbed-wire fence, this is where pieces of you get torn away.

I've overcome the blow, I've learned to take it well. I only wish my words could just convince myself that it just wasn't real. But that's not the way it feels.

I wake up every morning and it's like when you break up with somebody who has really broken your heart.

I couldn't deal with a normal life.

I had to get over [him]. For months now, a stone had been sitting on my heart. I'd shed a lot of tears over [him], lost a lot of sleep, eaten a lot of cake batter. Somehow, I had to move on. [Life] would be hell if I didn't shake loose from the grip he had on my heart. I most definitely didn't want to keep feeling this way, alone in a love affair meant for two. Even if he'd felt like The One. Even if I'd always thought we'd end up together. Even if he still had a choke chain on my heart.

Everything we love goes. So to be able to grieve that loss, to let go, to have that grief be absolutely full, is the only way to have our heart be full and open.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.

in the caves of my heart, where pain taps out its rhythms and sorrow sets its loss, i am without direction.

There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.

They say that breaking up is hard to do, now I know, I know that it's true.

You, sleeping on your bed of nails. Weeping an ocean beyond the pale. Strange, sorrow is your greatest skill. You're suffering from overkill... Choose whether to laugh or to cry. Menace and promise mingle in your eye. Wait, it's only a matter of time. You know everything will be fine... Rain falls down and the seas run high. When you're by my side we can rise above it. Let me dry all the tears inside. On your way you cannot hide from the howling wind and the roaring tide. You might get hurt but your fears will subside when you at last escape from the tears inside.

pg.9 "In my heart there's a peaceful anguish, and my calm is made of resignation.

It isn't up to me to break his heart; that's time's job.

Love dies in many different ways, and it's natural for the grass to seem greener on the other side. But it's not a competition; there's plenty of pain to go around.

Her heart was heavy because it was open, and so things filled it, and so things rushed out of it, but still the heart kept beating, tough and frighteningly powerful and meaning to shrug off the rest of her and continue on its own.

It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles... It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch; to love and let go again and again.

Those particular thoughts that are painful - love them. I love them to death!

Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest us with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities.

Heart, we will forget him! You and I, to-night! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me, That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you’re lagging, I may remember him!