John Irving Quotes

It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.

John Irving

• People
• Interesting
• Sympathy

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Quotes to Explore

• I took my acting very seriously. I did over 40 films, and naturally, some of them were called B-movies because the woman was at the top of the billing. Women couldn't star in their own movies.

  

  Mamie Van Doren
  • Women
  • Star
  • Woman

• Cuba needs a dose of perestroika.

  

  Carlos Fuentes
  • Needs
  • Cuba
  • Dose

• I'm a regular person. I know a lot of people love being famous. I don't like it. I'm just chillin'. YouknowwhatI'msayin'?

  

  Wale
  • Know
  • Like
  • Person

• If you have not been a villain at a certain point in time, you will never be a hero. And the day you are a hero, you may become a villain the next day.

  

  Carlos Ghosn
  • Time
  • May
  • Day

• I have a strong upper body; I'm an arms swimmer, and I always have been.

  

  Natalie du Toit
  • Strong
  • Always
  • Body

• From inside where I live, I feel like I just perceive events in a certain rational way. I often find it sad or poignant, and it may not make me laugh a bit. But I don't mind inventing a portrait that allows others to laugh if that's what they want to do.

  

  Madeline Kahn
  • Live
  • Mind
  • May

• I keep in touch with what's real.

  

  Sam Claflin
  • Real
  • Keep
  • Touch

• National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like, the first obey a mob, always demented and the second a king, generally sane.

  

  J. F. C. Fuller
  • Always
  • King
  • Fight

• My reasons for declaring a sexual preference had to do less with the pursuit of personal freedom than with the lust for pure shock value.

  

  Lance Loud
  • Freedom
  • Value
  • Lust

• You ask any person in the U.S. and they know who Mary Lou Retton is.

  

  Nastia Liukin
  • You
  • Know
  • Person

• I think it's like, you know, you can't get ahead of yourself, because no amount of success or exposure or opportunity is going to really matter or be ultimately fulfilling unless you can be totally present in what you're doing right now.

  

  Zachary Quinto
  • Success
  • Opportunity
  • Present

• I like it when I am in the middle; I am closer to the ball. The manager wants me to pass, to make assists, create chances, and I do more because I think the position is more central, and I don't ask all the time for the ball at my feet.

  

  Eden Hazard
  • Ball
  • Middle
  • Chances

• What doesn't feel okay to me, what feels a little bit out of balance, is when you want to turn yourself into something else – when you want to be another person.

  

  Zoe Saldana
  • Person
  • Feel
  • Balance

• My mother giving birth to me was just like Lady Sybil giving birth, except that there wasn't such a tragic ending.

  

  Jack Whitehall
  • Mother
  • Giving
  • Ending

• Insults are the business of the court.

  

  Naguib Mahfouz
  • Business
  • Court
  • Insults

• Only free people have an incentive to be virtuous. Only people who bear the consequences of their own acts will care about those consequences and try to learn from their mistakes.

  

  Harry Browne
  • People
  • Free
  • Care

• From the moment I walked into the White House, it was as if I had no privacy at all.

  

  Nancy Reagan
  • House
  • Moment
  • White

• My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again next week, you'll get a different answer.

  

  Orson Scott Card
  • Time
  • Work
  • Different

• The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.

  

  Arthur Schopenhauer
  • People
  • Result
  • Conditions

• People don't know how to listen, and it's not their fault. In school, we learn how to read, we learn how to write - but nobody teaches you how to listen.

  

  Dan Pink
  • People
  • School
  • Learn

• I am someone who worries a lot. I'm always worrying 'what if?' Now I'm a mum - there will be worries for the rest of my life, but they're not about me anymore.

  

  Penelope Cruz
  • Life
  • Rest

• I really wanted to make a dungeon crawler, but this game came out, 'Legend of Grimrock 2,' which was, like, the perfect dungeon crawler. It basically destroyed the genre for me, and no way could I make a game that good in that genre.

  

  Markus Persson
  • Good
  • Game
  • Perfect

• It's not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who, on the surface, are instantly sympathetic. I guess I'm always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.

  

  John Irving
  • People
  • Interesting
  • Sympathy