Sean > Sean's Quotes

“The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.”
― James Baldwin

“He went outside, desperate for something, anything—an embrace or a blow to the head.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“Where did "repentance" come from, then? Was there guilt attached to feeling lucky?”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“When she asked the birds what to do, they answered that they didn't know anything about love, that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“She was, to him, a holy grace, far more powerful than any priest or nun. God lived in her eyes. That was how he had fallen for her—like a religious conversion. It had struck him the moment he’d seen her, a profound, eternal love, the kind that occurred by cause of fate, against reason.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“A child of Maine, Wilbur Larch was used to looking into people's faces and finding their eyes; now he looked down, or away; like a city person, he made their eyes hunt for his.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“The most remarkable part of all is your DNA. You have a metre of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single fine strand it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto. Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system. You are in the most literal sense cosmic.”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

“It is an arresting thought that all that makes you lovely is deceased. Where body meets air, we are all cadavers. These outer skin cells are replaced every month. We shed skin copiously, almost carelessly: some twenty-five thousand flakes a minute, over a million pieces every hour. Run a finger along a dusty shelf, and you are in large part clearing a path through fragments of your former self. Silently and remorselessly we turn to dust.”
― Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants

“An orphan is simply more of a child than other children in that essential appreciation of the things that happen daily, on a schedule.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“There was the human body, which was so clearly designed to want babies—and then there was the human mind, which was so confused about the matter.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“Larch navigated the dark stairs and groped his way outside; he stepped on a rotting head of lettuce, which gave under his foot with the disquieting softness of a newborn baby's skull.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“He could not see the prostitutes without imagining their bacteria under the microscope. And he could not imagine those bacteria without feeling the need for the giddy warmth of ether—just a sniff; just a light dose (and a light doze). He was not a drinking man, Dr. Larch, and he had no taste for tobacco. But now and then he provided his sagging spirits with an ether frolic.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“If pride was a sin, thought Dr. Larch, the greatest sin was moral pride.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“She was angry with me for not giving her an abortion," Wilbur Larch replied.

"Good for you!" said the house officer.

But Wilbur Larch failed to see how this was good for anyone.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“A fussy or critical God, thought Wilbur Larch, would strike us all dead.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“God or whatever, forgive me," wrote Dr. Larch.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“On one hand, it smelled sweeter; on the other hand, it smelled sicker--Homer had difficulty deciding.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“The night air between the girls' and boys' division seemed odorless and void of history. It was simply dark outside.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.”
― Charles Darwin, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 9: 1861

“...but he could only hope that Homer understood how much Dr. Larch's self-esteem was dependent on his self-control. And so he said nothing; he left Homer alone in the operating room while he went to find the sternum shears.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“Happier!" said Melony; she gave a little jump in her chair and the stolen barrette dug into her. "You must be stupid, or crazy." Dr. Larch wasn't shocked; he nodded, considering the possibilities.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules