John Irving Quotes

You have to be very strong and tough-minded if you want to survive.

You have to be tough.

The strength I'm looking for isn't the type where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want us the kind of strength to be able to absorb that kind of power, to stand up to it.The strength to quietly endure things - unfairness, misfortunes, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.

We all survive more than we think we can.

You get used to the rejection and you don't take it personally.

My message has always been about resilience.

I've always been pretty independent, no matter what situation: good, bad, ugly, happy, sad. I dig deep, and I get over it.

I'm really not thick-skinned - my wife will tell you that I take sunsets personally - but I know that I've got the belly for whatever comes down the pike. I think it's tenacity. You've been there before, and you just have to recall, 'How did I handle that one?'

I'm hardened over many years. You toughen yourself for whatever job. You either take the good with the bad or don't bother.

I need to be someone who didn't break because of what I've been through.

We human beings are a lot more resilient than we often realize. Resilient and perseverant.

That loss was to breed an independence, a toughness of spirit, and an awareness of adversity and discipline that have never left me,.

And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the pain - the aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending wracking waves of hurt through my limbs and head - but it was manageable. I could live through it. I didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it.

Don't let a kick in the ass stop you. It's how you cope that says what you are.

When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color […]—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms. I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay. And until then: I run.

Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.

A good half of the art of living is resilience.

Growing up in a place that has winter, you learn to avoid self-pity. Winter is not a personal experience, everybody else is just as cold as you, so you shouldn't complain about it too much. You learn this as a kid, coming home crying from the cold, and Mother looks down and says, 'It's only a little frostbite. You're okay.' And thus you learn to be okay. What's done is done. Get over it. Drink your coffee. It's not the best you'll ever get but it's good enough.

He divines remedies against injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage; whatever does not kill him makes him stronger

If you wake up / And the day feels broken / Just lean into the crack

Do thou smile like the rose at loss and gain; For the rose, though its petals be torn asunder, Still smiles on, and it is never cast down.

It is poison - rank poison - to knuckle down to care and hardships. They must come to us all, albeit in different shapes, and we may not escape them. It is not possible. But we may swindle them out of half of their puissance with a stiff upper lip.

The first need of being is endurance; to endure with gladness if we can, with fortitude in any event.