John Irving | "This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people-because, surely, Wally was nice-would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer-and harder, if not impossible, to conceal."

"This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people-because, surely, Wally was nice-would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer-and harder, if not impossible, to conceal."

John Irving, American Novelist

Hypocrisy, Politeness, Criticism, Reality

12

Create Your Own Wallpaper

Standard

Customized

"This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people-because, surely, Wally was nice-would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer-and harder, if not impossible, to conceal."

"Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts."

Author Name

Personal Development

"[Or perhaps my friends should have realized that they shouldn't have left behind the FRICKING REASON FOR THEIR PROTEST!And that thought just cracked me up.]It was like my friends had walked over the backs of baby seals in order to get to the beach where they could protest against the slaughter of baby seals."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible except to God alone."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Not everyone who condemns masturbation can masturbate."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Not one of the learned gentlemen who pretend that the Mosaic laws are filled with justice and intelligence, would live, for a moment, in any country where such laws were in force."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Foras Road has a sordid reputation. Old crones sat in doorways, while their daughters were pushed out to earn money. It is intriguing that a society which is very covert with sexuality should be so straightforward about prostitution."

Author Name

Personal Development

"I would think a sense of the absurd is more important for a political cartoonist, because that could define things like a sense of hypocrisy or a sense of the things one has to be skeptical about."

Author Name

Personal Development

"When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within."

Author Name

Personal Development

"There's a lot more hypocrisy than before. Racism has gone back underground."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is."

Writing

"You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one."

Enemy

"A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to pray. Just when I start to hear the prayer, everyone pops up to sing. And what does the stupid sermon have to do with God? Who knows what God thinks of current events? Who cares?"

Worship

"Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us."

Gender

"Keep passing the open windows."

Mindfulness

"(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it, it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action."

Sports

"People are like that .... They need to make their own worst experiences universal. It gives them a kind of support.' And who can blame them? It is just infuriating to argue with someone like that; because of an experience that has denied them their humanity, they go around denying another kind of humanity in others, which is the truth of human variety -- it stands alongside our sameness."

Humanity

"And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you."

Writing

"That's okay," I said. "We're writers. We make things up."

Writing

"And what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence?"

Ethics

12

Standard

Customized

More

"Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts."

Author Name

Personal Development

Author Name

Personal Development

"Neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible except to God alone."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Not everyone who condemns masturbation can masturbate."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Not one of the learned gentlemen who pretend that the Mosaic laws are filled with justice and intelligence, would live, for a moment, in any country where such laws were in force."

Author Name

Personal Development

"Foras Road has a sordid reputation. Old crones sat in doorways, while their daughters were pushed out to earn money. It is intriguing that a society which is very covert with sexuality should be so straightforward about prostitution."

Author Name

Personal Development

"I would think a sense of the absurd is more important for a political cartoonist, because that could define things like a sense of hypocrisy or a sense of the things one has to be skeptical about."

Author Name

Personal Development

"When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within."

Author Name

Personal Development

"There's a lot more hypocrisy than before. Racism has gone back underground."

Author Name

Personal Development

More

"Sometimes that's a year, sometimes it's 18 months, where all I'm doing is taking notes. I'm reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is."

Writing

"You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one."

Enemy

Worship

"Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us."

Gender

"Keep passing the open windows."

Mindfulness

"(Baseball) is a game with a lot of waiting in it, it is a game with increasingly heightened anticipation of increasingly limited action."

Sports

Humanity

"And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you."

Writing

"That's okay," I said. "We're writers. We make things up."

Writing

"And what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence?"

Ethics