People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.

You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed.

Homer and Candy passed by the empty and brightly lit dispensary; they peeked into Nurse Angela's empty office. Homer knew better than to peek into the delivery room when the light was on. From the dormitory, they could hear Dr. Larch's reading voice. Although Candy held tightly to his hand, Homer was inclined to hurry - in order not to miss the bedtime story.

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.

In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases

...I suddenly realized what small towns are. They are places where you grow up with the peculiar-you live next door to the strange and the unlikely for so long that everything and everyone become commonplace.

I've always been interested in miracles, or the miraculous of the unexplained. I don't scoff at what makes people believe or want to believe. I think I understand the tremendous attraction of the mysteries of the church to the same degree that I understand and appreciate the frustration people feel, especially believers, with the human rule-making arm of the church, with the not-miraculous part of the church - any church.