Quotes

Quotes -Note, the page refrences were taken from the paperback edition of the book. Pg.138
" "I want you to know somethin',"Mr. Meany said. "I'm gonna listen to what your mother said. She told me not to interfere if Owen wanted to go to the academy. And I won't" he said. "I promised her," he added. It would take me years to realize that from the moment Owen hit that ball, Mr. Meany wouldn't "interfere" with anything Owen wanted."

Pg.181
"It was Owen Meany who found the words: " 'I AM THE RESURECTION AND THE LIFE, SAITH THE LORD: HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE; AND WHOESOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE.' " It seemed like a lot to say-for a dog-and the Rev. Mr. Merrill, freed from his stutter, was struck silent. " '. . .SHALL NEVER DIE,' " Owen repeated."

Pg.182
"Over all rituals, over all services-over every rite of passage-Owen Meany would preside."

Pg.196
" "WHAT THE PART REQUIRES IS A CERTAIN PRESENCE," Owen told Dan. "THE GHOST MUST TRULY APPEAR TO KNOW THE FUTURE." "

Pg.201
"Thus did Owen Meany remodel Christmas. Denied his long sought excursion to Sawyer Depot, he captured the two most major non-speaking roles in the only dramatic productions offered in Gravesend that holiday season. As the Christ Child and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, he had established himself as a prophet-disquietingly, it was our future he seemed to know something about. Once, he had thought, he had seen into my mother's future; he had even become and instrument of her future. I wondered what he thought he knew of Dan's or my grandmother's future-Hester's or mine, or his own. God would tell me who my father was, Owen Meany had assured me; but, but so far, God had been silent. It was Owen who had been talkative. He'd talked Dan and me out of the dressmaker's dummy; he'd stationed my mother's heartbreaking figure at his bedside-to stand watch over him, to be his angel. Owen had talked himself down from the heavens and into the manger-he'd made me a Joseph, he'd chosen a Mary for me, he'd turned turtledoves to cows. Having revised the Holy Nativity, he had moved on; he was reinterpreting Dickens-for even Dan had to admit that Owen had somehow changed a Christmas Carol. The silent ghost from Christmas yet to come had stolen the penultimate scene from Scrooge."

Pg.235
"that old UNSPEKABLE OUTRAGE that the Catholics had perpetrated, and his parents' inability to rise above what amounted to the RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION they had suffered; yet it was my opinion that Owen was persecuting his parents. Why they accepted such persecution was a mystery to me."

Pg.237
"Yet who was that someone my mother had been waving to, whose was the last face she'd seen, the face she'd singled out in the crowd, the face she'd found there and had closed her eyes upon at that moment of her death? With a shudder, I tried to imagine who it could have been-if not my grandmother, if not Dan?"

PG.238
"With a shudder, I imagined that it had been my father in the bleachers-it had been my father she'd waved to the instant she was killed!"

Pg.282
" "Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.' " I remember what Owen used to say about that passage; every Easter, he would lean against me in the pew and whisper into my ear. "THIS IS TH PART THAT ALWAYS GIVES ME THE SHIVERS." "

Pg.284
"I always had time to pull over, while Dan recited his favorite Shakespeare from Julius Caesar.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of Death but once.

Whereupon, Dan would grip the dashboard and tremble while a dynamite truck hurtled past us.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me the most strange that the men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.

"Owen, too, was fond of that passage."