Avenue of Mysteries Quotes

“The day women stop reading—that’s the day the novel dies!”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Women know when men don’t desire them: ghosts and witches, deities and demons, angels of death—even virgins, even ordinary women. They always know; women can tell when you have stopped desiring them.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“There comes a moment in every life when you must let go with your hands—with both hands.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“When people die, Vargas - I mean the people you will always remember, the ones who changed your life - they never really go away," Pepe told the young doctor.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“DREAMS EDIT THEMSELVES; DREAMS are ruthless with details. Common sense does not dictate what remains, or is not included, in a dream. A two-minute dream can feel like forever.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“In every life,” Dolores had said, “I think there’s always a moment when you must decide where you belong.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“At that moment, everyone walks on the sky. Maybe all great decisions are made without a net,” The Wonder herself had told him. “There comes a time, in every life, when you must let go.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“It is simply amazing, at that age, when you’re thirteen or fourteen, how you can take being loved for granted, how (even when you are wanted) you can feel utterly alone.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Behind every journey is a reason,”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Remember, Juan Diego—you are a reader,” Señor Eduardo said to the worried-looking boy. “There is a life in books, and in the world of your imagination; there is more than the physical world, even here.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Juan Diego lived there, in the past—reliving, in his imagination, the losses that had marked him.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Real life is too sloppy a model for good fiction,” Juan Diego had said.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“The student and the teacher had contrasting ideas about the sentence, which was: “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“It often happens with grown-ups that their tears are misunderstood. (Who can know which time in their lives they are reliving?)”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Many of Juan Diego's demons had been his childhood companions-he knew them so well, they were as familiar as friends.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Not every collision course comes as a surprise.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Lupe was upset that the Japanese honeymooners were wearing surgical masks over their mouths and noses; she imagined the young Japanese couples were dying of some dread disease—she thought they’d come to Of the Roses to beg Our Lady of Guadalupe to save them. “But aren’t they contagious?” Lupe asked. “How many people have they infected between here and Japan?” How much of Juan Diego’s translation and Edward Bonshaw’s explanation to Lupe was lost in the crowd noise? The proclivity of the Japanese to be “precautionary,” to wear surgical masks to protect themselves from bad air or disease—well, it was unclear if Lupe ever understood what that was about.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“There were some very good books in the backseat of the little Volkswagen; good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands—you could not hold faith in Jesus in your hands, not in quite the same way you could hold good books.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“The chain of events, the links in our lives—what leads us where we’re going, the courses we follow to our ends, what we don’t see coming, and what we do—all this can be mysterious, or simply unseen, or even obvious.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“why Edward Bonshaw had been so attached to it? “A glooming peace this morning with it brings”—well, yes, and why would such darkness ever depart? Who can happily think of what else happened to Juliet and her Romeo, and not dwell on what happened to them at the end of their story?”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Flor and Juan Diego and Lupe were the Iowan’s projects; Edward Bonshaw saw them through the eyes of a born reformer, but he did not love them less for looking upon them in this fashion.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Sic transit gloria mundi.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“What Brother Pepe saw in Edward Bonshaw was a man who looked like he belonged—like a man who had never felt at home, but who’d suddenly found his place in the scheme of things.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“He was asleep—he was still dreaming—though his lips were moving. No one heard him; no one hears a writer who’s writing in his sleep.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“An aura of fate had marked him. He moved slowly; he often appeared to be lost in thought, or in his imagination—as if his future were predetermined, and he wasn’t resisting it.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“good books were the best protection from evil that Pepe had actually held in his hands—you could not hold faith in Jesus in your hands, not in quite the same way you could hold good books.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“He’d complained to his doctor. “The beta-blockers are blocking my memories!” Juan Diego cried. “They are stealing my childhood—they are robbing my dreams!” To his doctor, all this hysteria meant was that Juan Diego missed the kick his adrenaline gave him. (Beta-blockers really do a number on your adrenaline.)”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“Treading water, a little dog-paddling—it’s a lot like writing a novel, Clark,” the dump reader told his former student. “It feels like you’re going a long way, because it’s a lot of work, but you’re basically covering old ground—you’re hanging out in familiar territory.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“never spoke of it. He took the miracle to his grave. All Andrew ever said about the voyage was that a nun had taught him how to play mah-jongg. Something must have happened during one of their games.”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries