A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.
John IrvingRead
No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of emotional support and connection when it comes to family and parenthood.
In this quote, John Irving expresses a deep sense of personal experience and the emotional void that can exist without the involvement and care of others during pregnancy. It highlights the idea that the journey of bringing forth a new life should not be a solitary affair; rather, it necessitates the warmth and affection of loved ones who are willing to share in the experience. The act of feeling a baby kick or listening to its movements symbolizes the emotional bonds that are fundamental to family and parenting.
Themes
FamilyParenthoodEmotional SupportConnectionLove
In practice
Example use cases
During a family gathering, to express the importance of emotional bonds in parenting.
More from John Irving
All 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.
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It is an important distinction to note that she looked not only as if she had taken good care of herself, but that she had good reason to have done so. (...) She looked to be in such total possession of her life that only the most confident men could continue to look at her if she looked back at them. Even in bus stations, she was a woman who was stared at only until she looked back.
John IrvingRead
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
John IrvingRead
I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.
John IrvingRead
Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you-because you know how to perform them-have no choice, either
John IrvingRead
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