John Irving Quotes

It's funny how you never know who you're going to share your life with.

Wherever you go and whomever you meet, you will find your own love waiting for you.

You never know which people will affect your life.

... one of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people. [p. 65]

we love what we love and who we love who we love and why we love why we love and find a falling shoelace knotted and strung between the fingers of strangers

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

You never know how much time you have with someone.

I think that's a universal theme, you know: we don't know who we're going to meet tomorrow. And that person might change your life entirely. There's always that possibility, and while you're not necessarily actively seeking it, you have that desire deep down.

Somehow, she had grown into a woman in between the fall of kings and collapse of worlds. Once she had been terrified of change. Then she had been terrified of losing Elend. Now her fears were more nebulous - worries of what would come after she was gone, worries of what would happen to the people of the empire if she failed.

Our souls are but leaves in a storm, and only the gods know where we will come to rest.

People fall in love in mysterious ways. Maybe it's all part of a plan.

Who knows if the gods above will add tomorrow's span to this day's sum?

I don't know who it is who lives or dies, who rests or wakes, but it is your heart that distributes all the graces of the daybreak in my breast.

I am hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan, like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

There are millions of people in the world, and the spirits will see that most of them you never have to meet. But there are one or two you are tied to, and the spirits will cross you back and forth, threading so many knots until they catch and you finally get it right.

Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn’t but have met them.

God always comes up with a third act twist -- and we won't know until we die whether the play was a comedy or a tragedy.

There is a word in Old English which belongs wholly to that civilization - "dustsceawung," meaning contemplation of dust. It is a true image of the Anglo-Saxon mind, or at least an echo of that consciousness which considered transcience and loss to be part of the human estate; it was a world in which life was uncertain and the principal diety was fate or destiny or "wyrd."

Is there a design in the events of our lives? Or do things just happen, much like a junk yard falling down a staircase? If it's the latter, how do you deal with it?

You find the people that you need to find. There's this gravitational pull.

Individuals do not meet by chance. They are necessary in the experiences of others, though they may not always use their opportunities in a spiritual way or manner.

Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.

Some would assert that Providence was at work shaking out its pockets in Humanity's lap. Other would argue for that mindless choreographer, Chance. Either way it was a simple thing: a lost diary fell into the hands of a soul-sick war hero on a train from Bombay to Jaipur just when he'd grown tired of the scenery and needed something to keep his thoughts from the minefield of his wretched thoughts. In such mild ways is the groundwork laid for first kisses and ruined lives.

Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.

Man wonders but God decides When to kill the Prince of Tides.