A Son of the Circus Quotes

“The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“In our hearts... there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they’re foreigners - even in their native lands. In our hearts... there also abides a certain suspicion that such people need to feel set apart from their society. But people who initiate loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nor are they undeserving of our pity.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“When people say that German or any other language is romantic... all they really mean is that they've enjoyed a past in the language.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“It seemed to Dr. Daruwalla that his story was the opposite of universal; his story was simply strange - the doctor himself was singularly foreign.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“And when Dr. Daruwalla breathed in her dangerous aroma, he thought he'd at last identified the smell of sex, which struck him as an earthy commingling of death and flowers”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“The two old secretaries conversed in the manner of hostile but toothless male dogs.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“You should listen to these people, Farrokh,” his father was telling him. “It isn’t necessary for them to be your moral equals in order for you to learn something from them.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct of philanthropy”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Three nights at the Hotel zum Storchen --- a decent hotel", Farrokh explained. "Your room overlooks the Limmat. You can walk in the old town, or to the lake. Have you ever been in Europe?”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“It was a deus-ex-machina world!”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Old Lowji’s nasty remark would haunt Farrokh forever: “Immigrants are immigrants all their lives!” Once someone makes such a negative pronouncement, you might refute it but you never forget it; some ideas are so vividly planted, they become visible objects, actual things.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Finches are seed eaters, but Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know this, nor did the doctor know that the green parrot perching on the vine had feet with two toes pointing forward and two backward. These were the details he missed, and they contributed to the growing list of things he didn’t know. This was the kind of Everyman he was—a little lost, a little misinformed (or uninformed), almost everywhere he ever was.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“It had been an evening in the empty dance hall when not even that depth of stone and the constant stirring of the ceiling fans could cool the stifling and humid night air, which had entered the Duckworth Club as heavily as a fog from the Arabian Sea. Even atheists, like Lowji, were praying for the monsoon rains. After”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Here come the characters who comprise the movie vermin, the Hollywood scum, the film slime—the aforementioned “unscrupulous cowards of mediocrity.” Fortunately, they are minor characters, yet so distasteful that their introduction has been delayed as long as possible.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Like any good novel, it lulled him into an almost tranquil state of awareness before it jolted him - it caught him completely by surprise.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Immigrants are immigrants all their lives.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“But what can be said about a man who keeps his needs and his obsessions largely to himself? When a man expresses what he’s afraid of, his fears and longings undergo revision in the telling and retelling—friends and family have their own ways of altering the material—and soon the so-called fears and longings become almost comfortable with overuse.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Education and travel can be humbling; the younger Dr. Daruwalla took naturally to feelings of intellectual inferiority.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“Sport and a Pastime by James Salter, for Farrokh”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus

“If you're not prepared to watch me die, you'll be worthless to me when the time comes.”
― John Irving, A Son of the Circus