When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

— John Irving

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

— John Irving

When (The World According To) Gap was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost one, too,’’ they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)

— John Irving

When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what does it matter what they did to you?

— John Irving

...where our desires "come from"; that is a dark, winding road.

— John Irving

With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter. Furthermore, you spend a little time learning what it's like to live in someone else's shoes.

— John Irving

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casual

— John Irving

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.", Eighth Series, ed. George Lipton, 1988)

— John Irving

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.

— John Irving

You can't learn everything you need to know legally.

— John Irving