John Irving Quotes

Death in its way comes just as much of a surprise as birth.

Even death after a long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. ... Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today?

No matter how expected, death is always the ultimate surprise.

The hour of death waits for no order. Death does not even come from the front. It is ever pressing on from behind. All men know of death, but they do not expect it of a sudden, and it comes upon them unawares. So, though the dry flats extend far out, soon the tide comes and floods the beach.

Whether you like it or not, you're forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don't fear death, I'm a fatalist. I believe when it's your time, that's it. It's the hand you're dealt.

It is the lot of man but once to die.

Obviously, we're all going to die at some point. Whether or not we are fated to die in some way I think is debatable. I just don't know which side to debate.

I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.

How shocking must thy summons be, O death, to him that is at ease in his possessions! who, counting on long years of pleasure here, is quite unfurnished for the world to come.

Life and death do not wait for legal action.

We are left with nothing but death, the irreducible fact of our own mortality. Death after a long illness we can accept with resignation. Even accidental death we can ascribe to fate. But for a man to die of no apparent cause, for a man to die simply because he is a man, brings us so close to the invisible boundary between life and death that we no longer know which side we are on. Life becomes death, and it is as if this death has owned this life all along. Death without warning. Which is to say: life stops. And it can stop at any moment.

I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call.

The one certain thing was that death never came at an expected moment.

Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.

While life could be evaded, death could not.

Yet though a man gets many wounds in breast, He dieth not, unless the appointed time, The limit of his life's span, coincide; Nor does the man who by the hearth at home Sits still, escape the doom that Fate decrees.

Live how we can, yet die we must.

Well, that’s that, then. We’re all going to die. Charming.

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!

Life flows on over death as water closes over a stone dropped into a pool. ... Fate is certain; death is certain; but the courage and nobility of men and women matter more than these.

Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die.

Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

All stories, if continued far enough, end in death.

Every shot has its commission, d'ye see? We must all die at one time, as the saying is.