John Irving Quotes

The loss of Eden is personally experienced by every one of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood.

I regret losing my innocence so early.

Years have passed and how I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again.

I had proof that I had five senses, that I knew how to get myself to function! And then I lost my childhood.

Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.

I have irrational fears, and they all go back to losing my father as a kid. I've never gotten over it.

It wasn't until I left that I realised it's not weird to grow up in certain cities and, by the age of 27 or 28, for all of your friends to still be alive. I can think of a lot of kids that I knew in Chicago who were supposed to grow up but didn't.

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses.

When I look back on my childhood, I think of that short time in Beirut. I know that seeing the city collapse around me forced me to grasp something many people miss: the fragility of peace.

Childhood is a disease - a sickness that you grow out of.

I lost my mother when I was very young, and my father when I was in college.

But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.

I had to deal with death at a really young age.

My childhood was extreme.

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.

When I was young I lost everything.

And when we used to play and fight in the streets in Brooklyn and I would get hurt or something, my mother would always come out and save me. So that sort of postponed the inevitable about getting a good beating, without having somebody to come and save you.

I had injuries - even when I was younger, I had problems with my back. I had to grow up very fast.

I lost my biological father at nine, but up until then, we celebrated Christmas and Easter too.

It was hard saying goodbye to that oblivion they call childhood.

I had to grow up very quickly.

When I was four or five, I had an older brother who got paralyzed from the neck down in junior high school. Some kid did a wrestling fall on him and hit his spine. We had to take care of him. I went from being the baby to not really being the baby anymore.

The first movie that ever scared me, I feel like it wasn't a scary movie. I feel like it was 'Dennis the Menace' or something.

Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.

The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.